Sharing Cities Shaping Cities

Sharing Cities
Shaping Cities
Edited by
Giuseppe Salvia, Eugenio Morello and Andrea Arcidiacono
Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Urban Science
www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci
Sharing Cities Shaping Cities
Special Issue Editors

Giuseppe Salvia
Eugenio Morello
Andrea Arcidiacono
MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade

Special Issue Editors
Giuseppe Salvia Eugenio Morello Andrea Arcidiacono
Politecnico di Milano Politecnico di Milano Politecnico di Milano
Italy Italy Italy
Editorial Office
MDPI
St. Alban-Anlage 66
4052 Basel, Switzerland
This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal
Urban Science (ISSN 2413-8851) from 2018 to 2019 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/
urbansci/special issues/Sharing Cities Shaping Cities).
For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as
indicated below:
LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number,
Page Range.
ISBN 978-3-03897-988-3 (Pbk)

ISBN 978-3-03897-989-0 (PDF)

c 2019 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative
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published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum
dissemination and a wider impact of our publications.
The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons
license CC BY-NC-ND.
Contents
About the Special Issue Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Giuseppe Salvia, Eugenio Morello and Andrea Arcidiacono

Reprinted from: Urban Science 2019, 3, 23, doi:10.3390/urbansci3010023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Jacqui Alexander
Domesticity On-Demand: The Architectural and Urban Implications of Airbnb in Melbourne,
Australia
Mark Hammond
Spatial Agency: Creating New Opportunities for Sharing and Collaboration in Older People’s
Cohousing
Giacomo Durante and Margherita Turvani

Coworking, the Sharing Economy, and the City: Which Role for the ‘Coworking Entrepreneur’?
Mina Akhavan, Ilaria Mariotti, Lisa Astolfi and Annapaola Canevari

Coworking Spaces and New Social Relations: A Focus on the Social Streets in Italy
Mayo Fuster Morell and Ricard Espelt

A Framework for Assessing Democratic Qualities in Collaborative Economy Platforms:
Analysis of 10 Cases in Barcelona
Afif Fathullah and Katharine S. Willis

Engaging the Senses: The Potential of Emotional Data for Participation in Urban Planning
Yiyun Sun
Sharing and Riding: How the Dockless Bike Sharing Scheme in China Shapes the City
Giovanni Vecchio
Producing Opportunities Together: Sharing-Based Policy Approaches for Marginal Mobilities
in Bogotá
v
About the Special Issue Editors
Giuseppe Salvia is a research fellow at Politecnico di Milano, with a Ph.D. in Design. He is
mainly interested in the way socio-technical innovations reconfigure practices and routines in
order to understand and develop strategies for transitioning towards more sustainable patterns of
consumption and production. He has been investigating contemporary phenomena related to the
sharing economy; collaborative consumption; energy use; making, repair, fabbing, and DIY; and
the acquisition and development of skills. Methodologically, Giuseppe uses ethnographical and
co-design tools to explore how socio-technical innovations and practices occur and evolve. He has
also collaborated on research projects focusing on design strategies for sustainable consumption,
life cycle assessment, bio-inspired design approaches, materials innovation and sensory qualities.
Giuseppe also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in schools of product design and
urban studies. He is the (co-)author of over 50 publications, an organizer of international conferences
and events.
Eugenio Morello is an architect by education, an associate professor of urban design at Politecnico

di Milano, and a coordinator and research scientist of the Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto
Curti, at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Since 2017, he has been the Rector’s
Delegate for environmental sustainability and he is responsible for institutional projects aimed
towards developing a sustainable campus. He is the principal investigator of the European H2020
projects for the co-design of nature-based solutions and novel urban services in Milan. Since 2015,
he has served as a member of the board of the Urban Planning, Design, and Policy Ph.D. program.
He is an instructor of the design studio ‘Energy and Urban Planning’, on energy transition and
urban resilience solutions. His research interest is situated at the intersection of urban design and
environmental quality and climate design. He investigates the integration of environmental aspects
and energy transition solutions aiming towards the closing of energy and material cycles at the local
scale. More recently, his research work has developed new insights into the topics of collaborative
consumption and the sharing society and how these new paradigms can inform urban planning and
urban design and co-design.
Andrea Arcidiacono is an associate professor and member of the board of the Ph.D. programme
in Urban Planning, Design and Policy UPDP at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
(DAStU), Politecnico di Milano. He is the vice-president of the National Institute of Planning
(INU), director of the LabPPTE—Plans, Landscape, Territories, and Ecosystem at the DAStU, and
scientific director of the national Land Take Research Centre (CRCS). He is a member of the
editorial board of the Italian Journal “Urbanistica”. His research interests include urban planning
and design; landscape planning; open spaces design; ecosystem analysis and nature-based solutions
for spatial planning; and policies for land take limitation. He is the DAStU principal investigator of
the European programme LIFE 2014-2020 ‘European Programme for the Environment and Climate
Action’ (LIFE 2017), involved in the three-year funding programme: ‘SOIL4LIFE’, the project leader
of the DAStU-POLIMI research group for studies and researches to support the design of the new
Lombardy Regional Landscape Plan PPR, scientific director for the research activities funded through
a regional competitive bid by Fondazione Cariplo 2014. He is the (co-)author of over 100 scientific
publications.
vii
Editorial
Giuseppe Salvia * , Eugenio Morello and Andrea Arcidiacono
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano, 20158 Milano, Italy;
eugenio.morello@polimi.it (E.M.); andrea.arcidiacono@polimi.it (A.A.)
* Correspondence: giuseppe.salvia@polimi.it
Received: 31 January 2019; Accepted: 20 February 2019; Published: 22 February 2019
1. Contemporary ‘Shapring’: How is Sharing Shaping Urban Practices and Dynamics?

In recent years, ‘sharing cities’ has spread globally, starting in 2012 when Seoul declared its intent
to pursue sharing economy strategies [1]. Other cities then followed, including Amsterdam, Boulder,
and Rio de Janeiro. Their pursuits to become sharing cities also intended to face major contemporary
urban challenges, including global urbanization [2] and resource depletion [3]. Sharing cities make use
of (often smart) technologies to connect a larger number of users to idling assets, hence to be ‘shared’ by
a wider population, rather than being individually owned. Within this trend, assets that are typically
shared include vehicles and rides, bedrooms and accommodation, as well as tools and competences.
Environmental, social and business advantages are envisaged by many [4–6], often leading to
significant financial investments by industries, public bodies and international organizations. Sharing
cities is a locution which has emerged to express the marriage of the sharing economy in urban
areas [7–9]. Davidson and Infranca [10] describe urban conditions as fundamental for the value
proposition of the innovative elements of the current sharing hype.
The physical and social configuration of a city shapes the way in which sharing takes place: size
and type of fabric, mobility and accessibility, availability of public spaces, social norms, habits and
traditions and, therefore, the unit of analysis. Vice versa, how sharing shapes—rather than being
shaped by—urban features may apply likewise and, in our view, deserves attention to reflect upon the
changes that the contemporary sharing-based practices may bring about.
Cities are complex systems, crossed and shaped by flows of both material and immaterial
resources. Sharing practices are impacting on the human connections and relationships to assets,
shifting from ownership-based to access-based approaches. It is not the practice of sharing alone
that is new [11], but rather the dynamics of no longer relying on previously formed relationships
with sharers ([9], p. 88), thus expanding the network of interactions to geographically distributed
‘strangers’ [12]. The types of connections between engaged actors are shifting from more traditional
dyadic forms (i.e., one-to-one) towards polyadic (i.e., one-to-many) or even rhizomatic patterns
(i.e., many-to-many) [13,14]. Also, in our view, these patterns of spread connectivity represent a key
element of the ‘sharing’ trend, i.e., the facilitated access to a multitude of distributed assets, resources
and people. All this will have strong implications in transforming cities in the near future; this urban
transition is going to take place regardless of urban planning practices and top-down decision making.
It is the sole responsibility of urban planners to recognize the new design challenges offered by the
sharing society and turn them into opportunities for regenerating urban space.
This Special Issue intends to contribute towards this direction, i.e., scoping the implications of
sharing in shaping the urban context, a dynamic we call ‘shapring’ for convenience. To this end, a call
for contributions to a research symposium was launched to respond to research questions regarding:
• Urban fabric: How is ‘sharing’ shaping cities? Does it represent a paradigm shift with tangible
and physical reverberations on urban form? How are shared mobility, work, inhabiting, energy,
and food provisions reconfiguring the urban and social fabric?
Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 23; doi:10.3390/urbansci3010023 1 www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci

Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 23
• Social practices: Are new lifestyles and practices related to sharing changing the use and design
of spaces? To what extent is sharing triggering a production and consumption paradigm shift to
be reflected in urban arrangements and infrastructures?
• Sustainability: Does sharing increase the intensity of use of space and assets, or, rather, does
it increase them to meet the expectations of convenience for urban lifestyles? To what extent
are these phenomena fostering more economically-, socially-, and environmentally-sustainable
practices and cities?
• Policy: How can policy makers and municipalities interact with these bottom-up phenomena and
grassroots innovation to create more sustainable cities?
More than 70 contributions from over 30 countries were submitted for double-blind peer review
and a selection of 12 were presented in Milan in March 2018, hosted by Politecnico di Milano. Nearly
50 delegates (including researchers, practitioners and municipalities’ representatives) debated on key
themes and features characterizing the phenomenon from multiple perspectives and drawing on
insights from fieldwork activities in Europe, Asia and Oceania.
Some of the presented contributions were further developed for submission to the Special Issue,
which in our view constitutes a primary step-stone in the path which addresses how the socio-technical
innovation brought about by sharing is affecting the reconfiguration of urban dynamics and spaces.
The full papers of this Special Issue investigate multiple forms of sharing, including novel ones
for either domestic or working spaces; collaboration forms, platforms and commons; citizens’ sharing
practice and data. These are briefly summarized below.
2. Shapring Domestic Space for Accommodation

Housing and accommodation are amongst the most recurrently cited practices of the sharing
economy, possibly also due to the hype and debated case of AirBnB. Illegal accommodation conditions
(e.g., hygiene regulation, fire safety) and restricted housing access for locals (e.g., higher rent prices)
are detrimental consequences of shared accommodation abuses.
Jacqui Alexander [15] reports emerging housing typologies in Melbourne in response to the
demand for shared accommodation. A densification of sharing room standards is witnessed, often
shrinking in size and reshaped in suboptimal conditions (e.g., room with no access to natural light)
within supersized houses to escalate profit. Alexander conceptualizes novel forms for houses to be
shared, meeting comfort standards and more importantly proposes strategic planning to assist in
subverting the possibly pernicious effects of global disruption in favor of local interests.
Mark Hammond [16] interprets sharing accommodation as a process of citizen engagement in
the house design process, beyond profession and technical skills. The author explores and applies the
concept of ‘spatial agency’ in the development of co-housing spaces in the UK to be inhabited by older
people. Although the investigation embraces a wider definition of the sharing economy, which is not
necessarily related to the contemporary forms, the cases presented highlight two major implications of
interest in architectural and urban studies aligned with the aim of this Special Issue, i.e., on the one
hand, how the definition of indoor shared spaces and assets may reverberate in the reconfiguration
of local communities, neighborhoods and the whole cities; on the other hand, the reshaped role of
the architect who may enable—rather than define—the configuration of space that best fit with its
inhabitants preferences.
3. Shapring Working Space and Offices

The sharing economy and practice are also related to novel forms and dynamics of working,
demanding flexibility, adaptability, knowledge transfer, etc. Coworking spaces are spreading to meet
such forms, as highlighted by two full papers investigating the Italian context, which raise reflections
upon urban reconfiguration and developments.
2
Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 23
Giacomo Durante and Margherita Turvani’s study [17] contributes to the identification of a
‘coworking bubble’, due to a low performance output of such spaces in Italy. The factors are multiple,
mainly depending upon the space managers and number of services provided. The implications
spread across the cities and the novel forms of work which such spaces and their users may generate.
Mina Akhavan [18] and colleagues investigated the impact of Italian coworking spaces in their
urban context, with a focus on the case of Milan. Coworking spaces appear to support situated urban
regeneration, especially when in connection with contemporary forms of socializing in cities, as in the
case of Social Street.
4. Shapring through Collaborative Platforms

Sharing also applies to collaborative communities who cooperate to make a change, often for
local impact. Different forms of collaboration are present, specifically through platforms, cooperatives
and professional mediators.
Mayo Fuster Morell and Ricard Espelt [19] describe the forms and dynamics of the platform
collaborative economy, drawing on outcomes from fieldwork research. Three macro-models are
identified (i.e., open commons, uniform, platform coops) and 10 case studies in the Barcelona
collaborative economy ecosystem were analyzed according to six democratic common qualities,
which constitute the Star Framework. The application of the framework helps to qualify the nature of
existing cases and infers the possibility of an alternative economy based on solidarity and collaboration
to be initiated and fostered in the future.
5. Shapring through Data

Sharing in urban contexts redefines territories and reshapes their syntax. Citizens make use
of the city and assets by drawing on local knowledge, accomplishing daily practices, and uptaking
socio-technical innovations to accomplish their routines. This determines how cities are made.
These urban dynamics are reflected by data exchanged by citizens with the digital and online
services they use. The presenters of the citizens’ sharing panel of the symposium reported their studies
on how data sharing reveals or may reveal such novel urban forms, with the audience questioning
whether this data may predict patterns.
Katharine Willis and Afif Fathullah [20] address how data on emotions and crowd-sourcing may
be used to investigate how citizens experience places. Using physiological wearable devices, human
body alterations are proxies for emotional variations. These are identified while Plymouth’s citizens
navigate in the city, thus depicting the emotional landscape and stress hotspots. Such an approach
could be scaled up in the future through widely distributed devices (e.g., embedded in smartphones)
and may inform urban planners and municipalities in particular about how the city is felt and where
interventions may be required to enhance citizens’ urban experience.
Sun [21] reports insights from a study on dockless bike sharing (DBSS) user experience in Beijing,
China. Social and environmental sustainability are the key issues. Low is the access for low-income
and older people. Furthermore, bike sharing seems to use new resources rather than existing ones.
Optimal governance of DBSS is to be distributed and coordinated between governments (infrastructure
and regulations), companies (qualities and maintenance) and citizens (education and culture).
Vecchio [22] addresses the role of policy to enhance urban mobility through demand matchmaking
and shared means, as a way to access opportunities, namely, to overcome criminality and poverty in
marginal areas. The evidence is built upon fieldwork data of travelers across the Colombian capital,
Bogotà, in which the coproduction of mobility services is explored.
In response, policy measures are proposed as operational options that nonetheless require
recognition and support by the institutions responsible for urban mobility planning.
3
Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 23
6. Conclusions
The papers introduced above contribute to the effort of initiating structured, fieldwork-informed
reflections about shapring, and the change to the urban fabric generated by the spreading of
sharing-based practices. Although interpretations of sharing and the sharing economy were not
necessarily consistent, relevant areas of investigation and territory were covered and raised the
importance of additional investigations. The other areas that deserve attention include:
- Sharing as an urban phenomenon and the limitations in marginal contexts (either periphery
or smaller cities), where sharing could provide benefits and reshape the urban configurations
and dynamics.
- The potential of intensifying the use of existing assets by sharing is often contradicted by the
replication of assets to ensure flexibility and adaptability, leading to a dualism between scarcity
and abundance.
- The implementation of policies regulating interventions in the urban configuration for enabling
forms of sharing that may benefit local citizens, thus limiting risks for gentrification or escalation
of resource intensity.
Acknowledgments: The editors of the Sharing Cities Shaping Cities Special Issue wish to thank all the authors
for providing insightful information and reflections on contemporary sharing landscape; the dept. of Architecture
and Urban Studies (DAStU) of Politecnico di Milano and the European Commission for providing funding to the
research symposium in which the Special Issue originated. The symposium was an initiative of and co-funded by
the H2020 project ‘Sharing Cities’, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme under Grant Agreement N◦ 691895.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
References
1. Moon, M.J. Government-driven Sharing Economy: Lessons from the Sharing City Initiative of the Seoul
Metropolitan Government. J. Dev. Soc. 2017, 33, 223–243. [CrossRef]
2. UNDESA. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision. 2018. Available online: https://esa.un.org/
unpd/wup/Publications (accessed on 21 February 2019).
3. Krausmann, F.; Gingrich, S.; Eisenmenger, N.; Erb, K.H.; Haberl, H.; Fischer-Kowalski, M. Growth in global
materials use, GDP and population during the 20th century. Ecol. Econ. 2009, 68, 2696–2705. [CrossRef]
4. Botsman, R.; Rogers, R. What’s Mine is Yours. How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live;
HarperCollins: London, UK, 2010.
5. McLaren, D.; Agyeman, J. Sharing Cities; The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2016.
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USA, 2000.
7. Agyeman, J.; McLaren, D.; Schaefer-Borrego, A. Sharing Cities. Briefing for the Friends of the Earth Big Ideas
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sharing_cities.pdf (accessed on 21 February 2019).
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9. Cohen, B.; Muñoz, P. Sharing cities and sustainable consumption and production: towards an integrated
framework. J. Clean. Prod. 2016, 134, 87–97. [CrossRef]
10. Davidson, N.M.; Infranca, J.J. The Sharing Economy as an Urban Phenomenon. Yale Law Policy Rev. 2016, 34,
215–279.
11. Price, J.A. Sharing: The Integration of Intimate Economies. Anthropologica 1975, 17, 3. [CrossRef]
12. Schor, J. Debating the sharing economy. J. Self-Gov. Manag. Econ. 2016, 4, 7–22.
13. Giesler, M. Consumer Gift Systems. J. Consum. Res. 2006, 33, 283–290. [CrossRef]
14. Ertz, M.; Durif, F.; Arcand, M. Collaborative Consumption: Conceptual Snapshot at a Buzzword. J. Entrep. Educ.
2016, 19, 1–23. [CrossRef]
15. Alexander, J. Domesticity On-Demand: The Architectural and Urban Implications of Airbnb in Melbourne,
Australia. Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88. [CrossRef]
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16. Hammond, M. Spatial Agency: Creating New Opportunities for Sharing and Collaboration in Older People’s
Cohousing. Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 64. [CrossRef]
17. Durante, G.; Turvani, M. Coworking, the Sharing Economy, and the City: Which Role for the ‘Coworking
Entrepreneur’? Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 83. [CrossRef]
18. Akhavan, M.; Mariotti, I.; Astolfi, L.; Canevari, A. Coworking Spaces and New Social Relations: A Focus on
the Social Streets in Italy. Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 2. [CrossRef]
19. Fuster Morell, M.; Espelt, R. A Framework for Assessing Democratic Qualities in Collaborative Economy
Platforms: Analysis of 10 Cases in Barcelona. Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 61. [CrossRef]
20. Fathullah, A.; Willis, K.S. Engaging the Senses: The Potential of Emotional Data for Participation in Urban
Planning. Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 98. [CrossRef]
21. Sun, Y. Sharing and Riding: How the Dockless Bike Sharing Scheme in China Shapes the City. Urban Sci.
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© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access
article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution
(CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
5
Article
Domesticity On-Demand: The Architectural and
Urban Implications of Airbnb in
Melbourne, Australia
Jacqui Alexander
School of Architecture, Monash Art Design and Architecture (MADA), Monash University, Caulfield East,
Melbourne 3145, Australia; jacqui.alexander@monash.edu; Tel.: +61-410-269-095
Received: 14 July 2018; Accepted: 7 September 2018; Published: 12 September 2018
Abstract: The home-sharing platform, Airbnb, is disrupting the social and spatial dynamics of
cities. While there is a growing body of literature examining the effects of Airbnb on housing
supply in first-world, urban environments, impacts on dwellings and dwelling typologies remain
underexplored. This research paper investigates the implications of “on-demand domesticity” in
Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, where the uptake of Airbnb has been enthusiastic, rapid,
and unregulated. In contrast to Airbnb’s opportunistic use of existing housing stock in other global
cities, the rise of short-term holiday rentals and the construction of new homes in Melbourne has
been more symbiotic, perpetuating, and even driving housing models—with some confronting
results. This paper highlights the challenges and opportunities that Airbnb presents for the domestic
landscape of Melbourne, exposing loopholes and grey areas in the planning and building codes which
have enabled peculiar domestic mutations to spring up in the city’s suburbs, catering exclusively
to the sharing economy. Through an analysis of publically available spatial data, including GIS,
architectural drawings, planning documents, and building and planning codes, this paper explores
the spatial and ethical implications of this urban phenomenon. Ultimately arguing that the sharing
economy may benefit from a spatial response if it presents a spatial problem, this paper proposes that
strategic planning could assist in recalibrating and subverting the effects of global disruption in favor
of local interests. Such a framework could limit the pernicious effects of Airbnb, while stimulating
activity in areas in need of rejuvenation, representing a more nuanced, context-specific approach to
policy and governance.
Keywords: Melbourne sharing economy; Melbourne Airbnb; architectural and urban effects of
Airbnb; socio-spatial effects of Airbnb; Airbnb and housing typologies; Airbnb and domestic design;
Airbnb and planning; Airbnb and policy innovation; Airbnb and governance
1. Introduction
In its short lifespan, home-sharing platform Airbnb has revolutionized tourism by developing a
framework that enables a global pool of applicants to rent homes on-demand, in shorter increments
of time, and at a premium [1]. In turn, this phenomenon is transforming the way we use,
access, and design domestic space, and is disrupting the social dynamics of cities around the
world. While there is an emerging body of literature examining Airbnb and its impacts on
housing markets in first-world, urban environments, its effects are contingent on local particularities,
including social, political, economic, and morphological systems, and they are therefore difficult
to generalize. Moreover, Airbnb’s impact on dwellings and dwelling typologies—as distinct from
property—remain underexplored. As such, this paper investigates “on-demand domesticity” through
a case study analysis of Melbourne, Australia. There, the uptake of Airbnb has coincided with the
high-density apartment boom to produce some significant social transformations, but also unique

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88
formal reverberations, as evidenced by a number of domestic mutations emerging in the city’s suburbs.
Through an analysis of available spatial data, this paper discusses the intersection of the three categories
of Airbnb listings—entire home, private room, and shared room—with the domestic landscape of
Melbourne, highlighting the need for development and planning strategies to address this new kind of
quasi-commercial, quasi-residential use and the array of challenges it has already wrought. Ultimately,
this paper argues that if Airbnb presents a spatial problem, it might benefit from a spatial solution.
Rather than defaulting to generic caps or blanket bans on listings as implemented by other global
cities, this research proposes that strategic planning could be deployed as a means to recalibrate and
subvert global disruption in favor of local interests.
The sharing economy has exploded in the last decade in the context of increasing resource
limitations, postindustrial economies, neoliberal austerity and privatization, and property speculation
and accumulation [2]. Less production and fewer resources have forced consumption to be
reconceptualized to enable a high turnover of existing products, and property is no exception. Airbnb
is an example par excellence of what is known in business terms as ‘collaborative consumption’ [3]:
a model designed to maximize value from latent assets (in this case, housing) through short-term
leasing, or “sharing” [1]. While still arguably in its infancy, the origins of the sharing economy can be
traced back to the arrival of Web 2.0 at the turn of the 21st century, when the social web [4] began to
facilitate new global communication and “virtual communities” and promised increasing horizontality
through “user-generated content” [4]. The first wave of sharing made possible by the internet was
largely content and image-based, exemplified by not-for-profit organizations like Wikipedia (2001)
and Creative Commons (2001) and later, free but sponsored social media sites like Facebook (2004).
Importantly, as Belk points out, these platforms operated outside of “expectations of reciprocity” [5]
or payment for service. By 2007, the smartphone had delivered personal GPS, opening up new
possibilities for the real-time sharing of resources and services. In the wake of the global financial
crisis’s conditions and politics of austerity [6], there was much need and enthusiasm for the peer-to-peer
sharing of goods and services via platform cooperatives [7]. But the global debut of home-sharing
platform, Airbnb, in 2008 and its ride-sharing counterpart, Uber, in 2009, marked the beginning of a
new kind of peer-to-peer model that is inherently transactional—one in which everything is able to be
commodified [8], including domestic space.
In Australia, the uptake of Airbnb has been rapid, enthusiastic, and largely unregulated [1].
Endorsed by both the public and private sectors—with government organizations like Tourism
Victoria [9] and corporate giant Qantas [10] forging recent partnerships with the platform—it is now
responsible for contributing over $400 million each year to the Victorian state economy alone [1,11].
Significantly, Airbnb’s arrival in Australia in 2012 coincided with the beginning of a strategic market-led
apartment building program in the eastern states, designed to accommodate the growing population
and avert a recession following the decline of mining investment [12]. Unlike other parts of the world
which have struggled to regain their footing following the 2008 collapse, Australia has experienced
a continuous period of economic prosperity, largely as a result of this population growth and
high-density housing boom [13], which has seen the rapid transformation of east coast cities, including
Melbourne, Sydney, and to a lesser extent, Brisbane. While apartment building has stimulated
growth in the construction industry as intended [14], increasing supply has done little to alleviate the
housing affordability crisis [13] which until now has continued to escalate in Melbourne and Sydney.
In Australia, America, and the UK, rising property prices have been fueled by global investment in
‘stable’ assets. Tax offsets like capital gains tax exemptions and negative gearing have incentivized
development but have also pitted owner-occupiers against investors, inflating house prices and driving
up rents [13], which in Melbourne reached record highs in 2017 [15]. Airbnb and other home-sharing
platforms have been blamed for exacerbating the crisis, with investors buying up apartments to lease
exclusively as short-term rentals for a higher return.
Melbourne is a particularly pertinent city for interrogating the architectural and urban effects of
Airbnb, not simply because of its already pressured housing market, but because of its laissez-faire
7
Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88
approach to business and property development, which has enabled both Airbnb usage, and until
recently, the design quality of apartments, to carry on unregulated. While Sydney has recently
implemented caps on the number of days Airbnb properties can be listed and enabled bi-laws to be
passed by strata owners corporations [16], Airbnb activity in Melbourne remains unrestricted. The
popularity of short-term holiday rentals in Sydney has posed challenges in terms of rental affordability,
housing supply, and nuisance activity. However, because the design quality of apartments has been
regulated since 2002 in New South Wales [17], the overall standard of residential construction is
higher than in Victoria, and so the effects of disruption on the built fabric of the city are less overt.
By comparison, while multi-residential development in Victoria is also subject to planning permissions
from the local or state authority, until recently there were no planning guidelines to protect the
internal amenity of individual apartments, such as minimum room sizes. Victoria’s “Better Apartment
Design Standards” [18] were only introduced in 2017 after years of poor quality development
and mounting pressure from the architecture profession whose input is still not mandatory in the
design of multi-residential development. This gap in the planning process has resulted in a glut of
homogenous dwellings in the inner city which lack basic amenities such as natural light to bedrooms,
cross-ventilation, and private outdoor space [19]. Considered unlivable by many residents, these kinds
of apartments have found a new market on Airbnb, and are often let year-round as holiday rentals [1].
In contrast to Airbnb’s opportunistic use of existing housing stock in other global cities,
in Melbourne, there is some evidence to suggest that the relationship between short-term rentals
and the construction of new homes has been more symbiotic—perpetuating, and in some cases, even
driving housing models. As such, this research paper asks the following: what tangible effects is Airbnb
having on the built fabric of Melbourne, and how might we establish a policy framework to effectively
address the challenges and opportunities that this disruption presents for the city?
2. Materials and Methods

Primary geospatial data sourced from InsideAirbnb.com provides a useful starting point for
understanding how Airbnb is disrupting the spatial dynamics of metropolitan Melbourne. This data
has been modelled according to listing type (entire home, private room, and shared room), relative
to urban infrastructure, and in consideration of existing housing typologies in the urban, inner, and
middle rings where Airbnb activity exists. Building on a discussion of issues explored in a short
opinion piece for Architecture Australia [1], this paper interrogates anomalies and hotspots within this
dataset by isolating and reviewing Airbnb listings of interest. By examining spatial data in combination
with interior and exterior photography included in the listings, it has been possible to identify and
locate specific sites of interest as case studies for further analysis. Publically available architectural
marketing and planning drawings have been sourced, and case studies have been visited to develop
a clear picture of the spatial context. One such case study—the supersized house, which perhaps
best demonstrates the reverberations of Airbnb on domestic form—has been analyzed in detail in
order to understand the regulatory processes which enabled its development. Planning submission
drawings have been closely scrutinized in relation to the National Construction Code (NCC) and local
planning schemes to determine existing grey areas and loopholes that have facilitated the construction
of new shared practices and typologies. Finally, a context-specific, strategic planning approach to
regulation to constrain and target disruption in a way that is useful for the city has been tested through
an action-based, speculative design-research project.
3. Results
When modelled, data suggests that Airbnb is taking available housing stock off the market where
it is in high demand: in the city center close to employment and public transport [1]. This trend is
consistent with many other global cities such as London [20], Amsterdam [21], and New York [22] that
have since taken steps to cap the number of days Entire Homes can be listed, or in the case of Berlin,
ban them all together [23].
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88
Due to the current lack of regulation in Melbourne, Entire Homes, which exist in large
concentrations in the inner city (Supplementary Material 1), can be let exclusively as holiday rentals,
and are often listed by professional hosts with multiple properties. Entire Homes constitute the
majority of Airbnb rentals in Melbourne—around 57% (Table 1)—which on average have very low
occupancy rates [1]. As we have seen in parts of central London and elsewhere, large swathes of
vacant property, either as a result of the ebbs and flows of tourism or as untenanted investments, have
implications for housing affordability and supply, but can also pose broader urban challenges for local
businesses, street life, and security, particularly at certain times of year [1,24].
Table 1. Percentage Breakdown of Airbnb listings in Metropolitan Melbourne by listing category. Data
sourced from InsideAirbnb.com, 2016.
Entire Homes Private Rooms Shared Rooms Total

56.85% 41.1% 2.04% 100%
6361 4600 229 11,190
The distribution of both Entire Homes and Shared Rooms in Melbourne closely corresponds
with the intensity of new apartments in the central business district (CBD) and the inner city. Shared
Rooms only constitute about 2% of all listings (Table 1), but they present a variety of other social and
regulatory challenges [1]. These listings tend to be concentrated in a small number of isolated new
developments in the western end of the CBD close to existing backpacker’s accommodation and in the
northeastern corner of the CBD near RMIT University—an area which has traditionally catered to large
populations of international students (Supplementary Material 2). Developments such as these, which
pre-date the implementation of minimum design standards, are characterized by ‘buried’ bedrooms
and inadequate floor, storage, and outdoor space. The Shared Room listings operating within them
are often overcrowded, with two-bedroom apartments accommodating up to eight guests [1] and
being marketed as longer-term housing options for international students, contract workers, and new
migrants. When they are used this way—effectively functioning as informal hostels—these properties
do not comply with the health and hygiene regulations required for this building classification [25].
Moreover, with four to a room, these apartments significantly exceed the assumed occupational load
upon which fire engineering assessments for residential towers are based (two people for the first
bedroom and one for every other bedroom) [25]. Given the prevalence of Shared Room listings within
particular developments, this kind of en-masse overloading could have grave consequences for fire
safety and emergency egress—issues which have been brought to the fore following recent fires at the
Lacrosse Building in Melbourne and Grenfell Tower in London [1].
More promising is the distribution of Private Rooms in Melbourne, which represent around
41% of listings (Supplementary Material 3; Table 1) [1]. While Private Rooms are still prevalent in
the inner-city, their pattern is more diffuse in the inner and middle suburbs, which is in line with
Australia’s predilection for very large houses but shrinking households [1]. Private Rooms in Melbourne
commonly take the form of a spare room or bungalow in a family home or share-house occupied by
other residents. They are more likely to be peer-to-peer, promoting efficient use of latent space and
minimizing periods of vacancy. With strategic planning, this kind of Airbnb usage in Melbourne might
yield very positive outcomes, increasing the number of people within the housing stock and dispersing
the economic benefits of the tourist economy [1].
However, without regulations, even the Private Room model is susceptible to exploitation,
as demonstrated by one particular supersized house identified in the inner suburbs of Melbourne,
which has seemingly mobilized the home as a machine for maximizing profit (Figure 1a). This
18-bedroom, 18-bathroom, post-nuclear house leases its rooms year-round on Airbnb for approximately
AUD$70.00 per night. At maximum occupancy, the house is capable of generating around
AUD$8800 p/w in rent, or around 14 times the average income for a rental property in the area.
9
Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88
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Figure 1. (a) Supersized 18 bedroom, 18 bathroom Airbnb house in an inner suburb of Melbourne,
Australia. Drawing by Jacqui Alexander. (b) Existing conditions plans and elevation drawings
as documented in the original planning submission, with a total of nine bedrooms. Drawing by
Jacqui Alexander.
Typologically, this uncanny domestic model sits somewhere between a suburban detached
house and a hotel. Private Rooms are accessed via long corridors, with a large communal kitchen
accommodating four industrial-sized fridges and not one but two island benches, a communal laundry,
gymnasium, living room, and lounge. The reconceptualization of the private space of the home as a
shared, commercial space is evident in the interior photographs, which are complete with exit signs,
fire extinguishers, security cameras in common areas, and tactile indicators, suggesting that the house
was subject to public-use regulations. Further investigation confirms that the home is not new, but
a significantly remodeled older property, likely constructed in the 1970s. In 2009, a development
application to partially demolish, expand, and remodel the home was approved, but prohibited the
use of the land as a “backpackers’ lodge, hostel, nurses’ home, residential aged care facility, residential
college or residential hotel without further consent of the responsible authority” [26]. The permit
conditions have been obtained but it has not been possible to locate the endorsed plans. A subsequent
planning application lodged two years later reveals that the existing house at the time of submission
had a total of nine bedrooms (Figure 1b), and permission was being sought to double the yield to
18 bedrooms. Additional research reveals the house is now listed on the Public Register of Rooming
Houses in Victoria [27], establishing its current classification under the building code.
In Victoria, a rooming house is simply defined as: “a building where one or more rooms are
available to rent, and four or more people in total can occupy those rooms” [27] However, these
buildings have a long history as affordable accommodation for people who do not meet the minimum
income threshold or do not have the required rental history to enter the mainstream market. They are
commonly operated by church groups, private housing providers, or registered individuals. According
10
Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88
to Consumer Affairs Victoria, a rooming house resident is someone whose “room in a rooming house
is their only or main residence” [27] and who does not need to sign a tenancy agreement to live there.
While the supersized house is primarily marketed to tourists via Airbnb who would not typically meet
the definition of a ‘rooming house resident’, it appears to occupy a grey area by incentivizing stays of
six months or more with discounted rates, while also accommodating short-term stays.
4. Discussion
The supersized house can be read as an urban artefact—an extreme example of the way in which
the sharing economy can shape cities in the absence of adequate regulatory and planning controls.
It raises some interesting questions in relation to housing provision, legislation, equity, and affordability.
Airbnb is clearly filling a gap in Melbourne’s housing market for short- and medium-term tenancies,
as demonstrated with both Private and Shared Room listings. Is this example merely elevating the
caliber of rooming houses that currently exists and charging accordingly? Or is it disingenuous
to register and advertise oneself as a rooming house if the intended market is primarily tourists?
According to the Tenants Union of Victoria’s (TUV) 2016 report, the median weekly rental cost for
rooming houses in Melbourne is $195.00 (approximately $28 per day) [28] or roughly half the rate of
the supersized house. Taking into consideration their respective target markets and price points, there
is little grounds to compare these two models in practice. The question remains: what happens when
candidates seeking actual rooming house accommodation contact this provider? While Airbnb has
effectively made homes available for public use, access remains at the discretion of the host, and as
such, risk is managed in other ways, including prohibitive fees, rating systems that can engender bias,
or outright exclusion [29].
Moreover, will this house set a precedent for more supersized share-houses, and what effect will
that have on rents? This particular case study is located in an inner suburb with a long history of
affordable, informal student share-housing. It is prudent to note that when this domestic case study
was identified in 2016, the host was operating a total of 81 Airbnb listings in Melbourne, many of which
were Private Rooms in similarly overblown, newly-built residential constructions, in or around the
same neighborhood. Further research is required to understand the planning processes and building
classifications which enabled these other developments.
Does the planning process and building code need to change to allow for new shared typologies
that can be more appropriately regulated according to their use? Whether or not the supersized
house is ethical or equitable, it is certainly opportunistic and highlights the current inadequacy of
both the National Construction Code (NCC) and the statuary planning processes in addressing the
bourgeoning shared practices and typologies that Airbnb and other home-sharing disruptors have
wrought. But while it can be argued that the provision of poor-quality apartments in Melbourne
has been perpetuated by their popularity as short-term rental accommodation, there is also evidence
to suggest that in the Australian context, Airbnb’s Private Room model might play a useful role in
intensifying the suburbs, promoting more efficient use of space in existing large homes and dispersing
the economic benefits of the tourist economy [1].
If we agree that Airbnb presents a spatial problem, it might benefit from a spatial response.
Rather than default to blanket bans and caps, this research advocates that through design and
strategic planning, we can recalibrate the patterns of disruption through the following strategies:
limiting its capacity for inequity and stimulating local economies where productive (Figure 2a).
In the context of Melbourne, this would mean restricting Entire Home usage in the inner city, where
competition for housing is high, and incentivizing Private Room letting in middle suburbs in need
of rejuvenation, intensification, and greater housing diversity. Currently, a significant obstacle
in promoting peer-to-peer home sharing in Melbourne’s middle suburbs is the radial train and
limited tram network, making it difficult to move around, especially with the added encumbrance of
luggage [1]. However, the Melbourne Metro Tunnel currently under construction and the proposed
Airport Rail Link—both earmarked for completion by 2026—present an opportunity to revolutionize
11
Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88
tourism in Melbourne in a way that could benefit visitors and citizens (Figure 2b). The Airport link
which is planned to operate between Tullamarine and Albion Station could unlock the western suburbs,
attracting tourists on inbound services to the city and decentralizing tourism [1]. Through strategic
planning, Private Room rental could be promoted in the suburbs to optimize spare bedrooms in large
homes, intensifying distributed neighborhoods and stimulating local business (Figure 2c).
As well as maximizing efficiencies in existing properties, Private Room letting could help drive
housing innovation in these suburbs by encouraging small-scale, grassroots infill development that
could cater to temporary guests but also the growing numbers of empty-nester and single parent
households, as well as families with dependents [30]. Currently in Victoria, infill types like granny flats
must only house dependents and must be removed when the family member moves out or moves on.
By following New South Wales’ lead in making granny flats a permanent and more broadly accessible
housing option, the state government could strategically incentivize the development of additional
autonomous accommodation on single allotments to support home-sharing in the broadest sense.
Local controls in combination with Airbnb’s property review mechanism could lift the design quality
of new dwellings, and the increased densities could help the council to fund infrastructure and amenity
improvements for residents.
(a)
Figure 2. Cont.
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88
(b)
(c)
Figure 2. (a) The top ten most popular suburbs in Melbourne for Airbnb rentals (2017). Nine of
the ten are considered “inner urban”; the other, Brunswick, is “inner suburban”. These suburbs are
all well-serviced by train and public transport networks. The current inefficient radial rail network
is a primary obstacle in decentralizing Airbnb use in the city and dispersing its economic benefits.
(b) The government’s current plan to develop an airport rail link by 2026 could revolutionize tourism
in Melbourne, connecting Melbourne’s east and west through a new continuous route and making the
western suburbs accessible for tourists on inbound services to the city. (c) Ten suburbs with Airbnb
potential have been identified, which will become more accessible to tourists via two new major
transport infrastructure upgrades: the airport rail link and the Melbourne Metro Tunnel. Western
suburbs such as West Footscray are earmarked for rejuvenation in the Maribyrnong structure plan and
could benefit from home-sharing intensification. On the other hand, established southeastern suburbs
like Ormond, which has very large houses but shrinking households, could optimize space through
private-room rental.
13
Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88
While the findings in this paper are highly particular to the social, economic, political, and
urban context in Melbourne, this research seeks to demonstrate that a strategic, “glocal” approach to
Airbnb regulation—one which considers the interplay of global and local forces—could be leveraged
to achieve positive urban outcomes for citizens. Can we establish rules of engagement for Airbnb
activity in Melbourne to catalyze better and more diverse housing provision? For Melbournians,
infill development may come as a welcome alternative to densification via the current controversial
high-rise, high-density model [31], delivering infrastructure that would endure long after the tourists
have left the scene [1].
Supplementary Materials: The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/2/3/88/s1.

Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank Monash University for support in the development of
this research.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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17. New South Wales Planning & Environment Department. State Environmental Planning Policy No.
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© 2018 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access
15
Article
Spatial Agency: Creating New Opportunities for
Sharing and Collaboration in Older
People’s Cohousing
ID
Mark Hammond
Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15 6BR, UK;
m.hammond@mmu.ac.uk
Received: 2 June 2018; Accepted: 27 July 2018; Published: 2 August 2018
Abstract: Older people’s cohousing enables individuals to share spaces, resources, activities, and
knowledge to expand their capability to act in society. Despite the diverse social, economic, and
ethical aims that inform the creation of every cohousing community, there is often a disconnect
between the social discourse developed by cohousing groups and the architectural spaces they
create. This is a consequence of the building development process in cohousing, in which groups
of older people are tasked with making decisions with considerable spatial implications prior to
any collaboration with an architect. The concept of “spatial agency” offers an alternative model for
the creation of cohousing, in which the expansion of architectural practice beyond aesthetic and
technical building design enables social and spatial considerations to be explored contemporaneously.
This study uses a two-year design-research collaboration with a cohousing group in Manchester,
UK, to test the opportunities and constraints posed by a “spatial agency” approach to cohousing.
The collaboration demonstrated how spatial agency enables both the architect and cohouser to act
more creatively through a mutual sharing of knowledge, and, in doing so, tests new opportunities of
sharing that are currently outside the cohousing orthodoxy.
Keywords: ageing; cohousing; architecture; co-design; spatial agency; sharing; design-research;

critical autoethnography; Bourdieu
1. Introduction
The cohousing model is a residential typology consisting of individual dwellings with collectively
owned facilities, with most communities seeking to develop strong social bonds between residents
through shared management, labour, and leisure activities. There is a growing cohort of “older
people” (commonly defined as those aged 50 and over) seeking to develop cohousing as a way of
responding to the opportunities and challenges posed by their experiences of ageing. Older people’s
cohousing uses the sharing of spaces, resources, activities, and knowledge as a way of increasing the
agency of those who reside in cohousing communities and developing new relationships between the
older individual and the cities they inhabit. Many communities seek to address wider social issues
through their sharing practice, such as environmental destruction [1], unaffordability of housing [2],
and societal paternalism [3]. Cohousing developments are resident-led and most employ participatory
design approaches, with residents having a significant influence on the forms of sharing that are
practiced within their community. Despite this, architectural responses to cohousing rarely reflect the
diversity of cohousing groups and their different collective aims, with most adopting an orthodox set
of shared spaces.
This study develops an alternative understanding of the architect’s role in older people’s
cohousing based on Awan, Schneider, and Till’s concept of “spatial agency” [4]. Spatial agency
seeks to apply architectural knowledge in contexts beyond the design of technical and aesthetic

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 64
form, positioning the architect as one of many agents of change. This new form of practice was
investigated through a two-year design-research collaboration with an older people’s cohousing
group in Manchester, UK, in which spatial agency was used to challenge the cohousing orthodoxy
and identify opportunities for new forms of sharing within a cohousing community and within the
wider city.
2. Ageing, Sharing, and Cohousing

An ageing population is set to be one of the main demographic shifts of the next century. Whilst
this is a positive development that generates many opportunities in society, discussion of urban ageing
often focuses on the problems of a large older population, such as the “burden” that older people
place on healthcare, pension, and housing systems [5]. This pervasive deficit perspective leads to the
marginalisation of older people in urban society. Older people are “ . . . relatively disempowered from
the option of managing community and neighbourhood change”, as housing, economic, and cultural
opportunities disproportionately favour the needs of younger professionals [6] (p. 334).
One such form of marginalisation for older people is the emergence of the “sharing economy”, or
“collaborative consumption”. Whilst there is a great deal of ambiguity surrounding these terms [7]
(p. 4), it can be broadly defined as a socio-economic model based on the peer-to-peer exchange of
services or the maximization of under-utilised assets [8] (p. 121). Prominent web-based models for
“sharing”, such as AirBnB and Uber, have been successful in making goods and services more accessible
for many people. The movement from ownership-based consumption to access-based consumption
has increased the affordability of some resources or services, whilst online infrastructure enables people
to commercialise their own assets or labour with a much larger pool of individuals than previously
possible. Despite these benefits for many people, the sharing economy enables exclusionary practices
that adversely impact individuals based on race and income, and, in doing so, reproduce existing
societal inequalities [7] (pp. 6–8). In terms of age, web-based sharing platforms are disproportionally
used by younger people; 18–29 year-olds are 700% more likely to use Uber (USA) than those aged
65 and over [9] (p. 13), and just 5% of properties listed on AirBnB are posted by people aged 60 and
over [10]. Whilst some have noted the potential for web-based platforms could offer potential benefits
for older people, such as the provision of in-home care support, these are still in their infancy [11].
The opportunities for older people posed by peer-to-peer sharing can only be fully understood
through a broader definition of the sharing economy. Rather than limiting the definition to a web-based,
profit-driven model of sharing, it is important to recognise that the coordinated acts of peer-to-peer
exchange can exist outside of virtual mechanisms, and that these exchanges are often driven by
social and emotional rewards rather than economic or material benefits [12–14]. By expanding the
definition of the sharing economy to offline and non-profit platforms, it is possible to identify a
number of practices through which older people can improve their quality of life through shared,
social interaction. For example, the “Men’s Sheds” initiatives in the UK enabled older men to share
their tools with each other. The aim of this is not to provide older men with access to assets they
do not own, but to enable members to “ . . . sharing skills and knowledge, and of course a lot of
laughter” [15]. Similarly, the “homeshare” model offers older people a way of maximising the value of
an under-used asset (an empty bedroom), but with social support as a primary motive as opposed
to financial income. Tenants rent a bedroom at a below market rate in return for undertaking some
domestic tasks (like cleaning and gardening) and offering companionship to the older person they live
with [16,17].
The understanding of sharing as a means of creating new social relationships is one of the core
elements of “older people’s cohousing”. Whilst cohousing takes many forms, all seek to use the sharing
of spaces, resources, activities, and knowledge to achieve more than they could in isolation, and to
increase their agency to affect social change within the city.
The cohousing model emerged in northern Europe in the 1970s and commonly consists of privately
owned residences and collectively owned communal spaces [18]. There is a range in the size and forms
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taken by cohousing communities, although 20–30 dwellings are cited by many practitioners as an
optimal size [19–21] Cohousing communities are often resident-led and managed, with the explicit
aim of generating social bonds between residents. A recent development in the field of cohousing is
“older people’s cohousing”, which has become an established sub-section of the cohousing movement
in the last 15 years [19,22–24]. The increasing interest in older people’s cohousing can be linked to
the transitions of aspirational baby boomers into older age, who seek “ . . . an alternative to living
alone, but reject conventional forms of housing for older people as paternalistic and institutional.” [23]
(p. 107). For many, changing residential environment in later life offers a “...meaningful avenue for
the elderly to extend themselves into the future, to find meaningful new stimulation and roles, and to
enhance their satisfaction during later life” [25] (p. 211). This is, however, predicated on the financial,
physical, and social capability to initiate such a change; barriers have thus far limited older people’s
cohousing to relatively wealthy and healthy individuals. One of the key benefits of older people’s
cohousing is the ability to be open about their own experiences of ageing, and, therefore, access mutual
support in response to the changing physical capabilities and emotional experiences of growing
older [24]. Other studies have also identified how cohousing can lead to increased participation in
civic and political processes [26] and increases the social capital of cohousers within the cities and
neighbourhoods that they reside in [27].
It is important to distinguish between cohousing as a form of housing development, and
cohousing as a set of relationships enabled by the environment it is situated in. Sharing not only
informs the day-to-day experiences within a cohousing community but often contributes to the
transformation of the neighbourhoods and cities in which they are located.
The day-to-day experiences within a cohousing community usually focus on opportunities for
informal social interaction, facilitated by the sharing of communal facilities. Communal kitchens and
dining rooms are ubiquitous in cohousing, enabling groups to regularly share meals together [18–20,28].
Many cohousing groups establish informal club or activity groups to use these spaces, such as a walking
group or book clubs. For older people, the mutual support derived from such a rich social network
also provides resilience to negative macro-level conditions, like ageism, in society or the medicalisation
of support needs amongst their cohort [24].
Although there are some examples of cohousing communities that become inward facing [29]
(pp. 2030–2031), many seek to develop strong relationships with the communities and cities they are
situated in [30] (p. 324). For example, the “Solinsieme” community in St. Gallen, Switzerland use their
communal space to host events for the wider community, including lectures and games nights [31–33].
Cohousing has also attracted political support for the contributions it makes to cities, with cities like
Hamburg supporting cohousing in areas with highly transient populations to encourage stability and
community resilience [34] (pp. 407–409).
In addition to these immediate interactions with neighbours (both inside and outside their
respective communities), many cohousing groups seek to effect change on a wider city or societal level.
These are often as a response to a perceived social injustice, or to demonstrate that alternative models
of living are possible. Examples of these include communities, such as LILAC in Leeds, UK, whose
mutual ownership model was developed in response to the increasingly unaffordable housing in the
UK [2]. Sharing is often used as a means of achieving a higher level of environmental sustainability
than is possible in an individual home, with communities, such as the Lancaster Cohousing in the UK,
installing district heating system and hydroelectric power installations [1]. For older people, cohousing
can offer a means of mitigating against predicted drops in state care provision through mutual social
support [22,35].
One of the key challenges within cohousing is the difficulty of the development process. Although
there is a lack of comprehensive data sources, it has been suggested that just one in 10 cohousing groups
ever progress to the construction phase [36]. It is not uncommon for the cohousing development
to exceed 10 years [37], with a DIY ethic, lack of property development expertise, and difficulties
procuring land all cited as challenges for prospective cohousing groups [36]. These issues are
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particularly pertinent in relation to older people’s cohousing, where a prolonged development process
might account for a significant portion of the individuals remaining years.
3. Architecture and the Creation of Cohousing

Whilst most definitions of cohousing attempt to describe a series of spaces, facilities, relationships,
and practices [18,19], cohousing can also be understood as a medium through which individuals define
these parameters for themselves. Rather than a fixed model of shared living, cohousing offers older
people the opportunity to create and negotiate their own social, ethical, and environmental vision, and,
in doing so, increases their capabilities to affect change in their immediate housing community and
the wider city. The diversity of motives behind cohousing demonstrates the need for each cohousing
community to define their own understanding of sharing, which is based on the collective capabilities
and desires of residents. This requires the creation and negotiation of a social vision alongside the
spatial environment through which it is practiced. As a result, the cohousing model is notable for the
near-universal adoption of participatory design practices in the development process [19] (pp. 19–20).
There is a lack of critical understanding of participatory design within the cohousing field beyond
the notion that cohousers should be “involved” in the design process to some extent [20] (p. 201). This
is usually manifest as a series of workshops led by an architect to propose the architectural form of
the site and building, based on a brief, site, and budget that had been pre-agreed by the cohousing
group [38]. The architect’s role is limited to the aesthetic and formal design, informed by their own
tastes and design expertise, which are augmented to some extent with the views of the cohousing group
they work with. Whilst this is cited as an important way of bringing the cohousing group together
and making sure that the community meets the requirements of the clients [39] (p. 235), this design
process can be seen as limiting. In this design process, cohousing groups are tasked with creating a
collective identity and social ethos, but are disempowered from exploring the spatial implications
and possibilities of these ideas. By the time an architect has been employed, the social definition of
the community is no longer malleable, as it is manifest in budgets, design briefs, and site selections.
This results in communities with a strong conceptual ethos, which are often not represented spatially.
For example, the Older Women’s Cohousing (OWCH) community in London, UK has developed a
strong feminist and anti-ageism identity, manifest in a building that is “ . . . beautiful and suited to
community living, but not particularly radical.” [40] (p. 29).
Overcoming these limitations demands a new understanding of the architect/cohouser
relationship, in which the social discourse within a cohousing group is developed in parallel with
the spatial discourse through which it is enabled. This requires a reconceptualisation of the linear
development process, in which architects only contribute to the final building design phase.
Awan, Schneider, and Till’s model of ”spatial agency” is critical of the interpretation of architecture
as the aesthetic and technical task of building design [4] (p. 30). In response to this, they argue that
architects should seek new forms of practice that engage with the social, political, and ethical aspects
of society [41]. They propose that architects take on the role of spatial agents, a transition predicated on
two fundamental shifts in architectural practice: First, it calls for the “ . . . inclusion of others, amateurs,
in the processes” of design; and second, it dismisses the idea that “ . . . the building as the sole source
and representation of expertise” held by the architect [4] (p. 43). This requires the architect to reject
their role as the autonomous creator of purely aesthetic or technical form [4] (pp. 27–28), and instead
understand that their role is “ . . . not the agent of change, but one among many agents.” [41] (p. 97).
By breaking the link between architectural practices and the creation of a building, spatial
agency enables an alternative understanding of the architect’s relationship to cohousing. Rather than
separating the social discourse within a community (defined by the cohousing group) from the spatial
or architectural production of the community (defined primarily by the architect), spatial agency
provides a means of developing both in unison. This creates an opportunity to identify and test
new opportunities for sharing that a cohousing group would be unlikely to consider had they not
collaborated with a designer. By challenging the idea of the architect solely as a building designer,
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spatial agency also opens the opportunity for architects and cohousing groups to collaborate at a much
earlier stage of development than is seen in most cohousing developments.
In 2014, I began collaborating with Manchester Urban Cohousing (MUCH) in Manchester, UK;
a group of older people who were attempting to establish a cohousing community. The group were
in the very early stages of setting up their cohousing group, and the group did not have a site, brief,
or finances in place. Despite this, the group saw the value in collaborating with an architect to better
understand what they could achieve and how it might shape the definition of their collective values.
As a result, I took on the role of a spatial agent with the group, supporting the development of a
shared, creative, and spatial discourse that would underpin their later aspirations to create a cohousing
community. Over the course of a two-year design-research collaboration, we sought to identify the
limitations and opportunities presented by spatial agency in cohousing, and how it could help to
create innovative forms of sharing both within and outside the confines of a cohousing community.
4. Methodology: Exploring the Potential of Spatial Agency through Design-Research

MUCH was formed in response to a series of conversations between seven friends about what
they wanted to do in retirement. The group discovered cohousing after it was featured in a newspaper,
which led them to spend four years discussing and researching the model.
My collaboration with MUCH began in January 2014 and finished in April 2016. During this time,
the initial group of seven members grew, stabilising at 14 members for the majority of the collaboration.
The majority of the group had either retired, reduced their working hours, or had plans to retire in the
next couple of years. None of the group came from architectural backgrounds, and none of the group
had experience in property development.
The collaboration aimed to establish and test how the group could share spaces, resources,
activities, and knowledge, both within their cohousing community and with the wider city. Informed
by the concept of spatial agency, the interactions between MUCH and myself took place much
sooner than an architect would normally work with a cohousing group, focusing on the early project
definition stage, rather than designing the actual building that the group would construct. The purpose
of these interactions was to help create a social and spatial discourse about the forms of sharing
that would be possible in their community, and eventually produce a design brief based on these
ideas. The collaboration adopted a non-linear structure of reflexive, iterative, and generative practices,
embracing the transformative potential of “contingency”, a key quality of spatial agency [42]. As a
result, the collaboration with MUCH involved participation in a wide range of situations where
opportunities could emerge, but, equally, could not be known in advance. Practically, this involved
attending or delivering 37 individual practices; meetings, workshops, design charrettes, training
events, and site visits. Through these practices, we identified challenges and limitations within the
cohousing development process and proposed how spatial agency could contribute to resolving these
limitations. The collaboration with MUCH was recorded through contemporaneous field notes, photos,
and audio recordings, with additional reflections gathered through a structured focus group after
our collaboration.
The collaboration with MUCH took the form of “research through practice”. Research through
design is a process through which issues and questions emerge because of design practices, and
are tested through the application of new practices [43] (p. 96). My practices as a spatial agent
were, therefore, both the research methodology and the object of enquiry. This approach enabled the
generation and communication of knowledge that would not be possible as either a non-participant
observer or through retrospective case-study analysis. Whilst practice-led research is well established
in the architectural field [44], the approach presents a number of methodological challenges, such as
the replicability of creative processes in which the researcher is an active participant. The approach
employed in this study recognises that any number of variables could have changed the trajectory
of the collaboration, but that this does not undermine the validity of the insight it provides, as “ . . .
there are forms of knowledge peculiar to the awareness and ability of a designer” [45] (p. 5), which can
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only be accessed through the undertaking of creative enquiry [42]. With regards to these constraints
and opportunities, this study does not claim to provide a general evaluation of the effectiveness of
spatial agency compared to other architectural approaches. Instead, it presents examples of how
spatial agency enables older people to act creatively and provide critical analysis through which the
architect-cohouser relationship can be better understood.
One of the challenges of research through design is that knowledge is often embedded within
the traditional architectural outputs; buildings, models, and drawings [42,43]. By adopting the spatial
agency position that building design is not the sole expression of architectural knowledge, this study
used critical autoethnography as a means of documenting and reflecting on the interactions within the
processes of design, as opposed to analysing the designed outcomes.
Autoethnography is a narrative-based enquiry in which a subject is studied through the
experiences of the author. Although written from an autobiographical perspective, the methodological
orientation is ethnographic as it seeks to understand the interactions between the author and other
individuals, in this case within the act of co-design [46] (p. 48). This approach offers a unique
insight into the cohousing development process, as the majority of the research to date has focused on
retrospective case study analysis undertaken by researchers who were not involved in the development
process. The result of this is a focus on outcomes within the existing cohousing literature, rather than
the interactions through which these outcomes were created.
Rather than simply describing the interactions between the architect and cohouser, critical
autoethnography demands that a theoretical position is used to analyse the experiences of the author,
and therefore provide insight that can be applied to a wider set of situations that other practitioners
might face. This critical analysis should not be static, but allow the author to “ . . . openly discuss
changes in their beliefs and relationships over the course of fieldwork” as their experiences help shape
their understanding of the people and contexts they operate within [47] (p. 384). In my collaboration
with MUCH, the critical analysis is informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of practice [48], which are
used to identify the limits to creativity and how they can be overcome.
Through a critical autoethnographic account of two workshops, this paper identifies the
limitations and opportunities posed by spatial agency. The first workshop was a self-directed design
game, in which the self-imposed limits that the MUCH members adopted were identified through
a creative exercise. The second workshop was a narrative based workshop, in which participants
used narrative to critique the cohousing orthodoxy and create innovative forms of sharing within and
outside their proposed community. These two workshops demonstrate how spatial agency can allow
creative ideas about sharing to emerge through a propositional critique of the cohousing orthodoxy,
but also the creative limits that prevent these from emerging as part of the normal development process
when architectural input only occurs much later.
5. Workshop One: Design Game

The MUCH group requested that I design a workshop for their public recruitment event, with the
goal of providing an opportunity for prospective members of their group to be creative and get to know
each other. I proposed a short design game, in which the 22 participants would be tasked with creating
a cohousing community in groups of five to six people, using model making and wooden blocks to
produce their design (see Figure 1). The designs would be self-directed by each group without my
involvement, thus they demonstrated both the group’s creativity to define shared practices and also
the limits of their creativity, which we could build on in later workshops. During the workshop, I
circulated between the groups to discuss the decisions each group made. At the conclusion of the
workshop, each group presented their design to the rest of the attendees.
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Figure 1. Manchester Urban Cohousing (MUCH) members participating in the design game workshop.
The workshop demonstrated one of the limits to defining new forms of sharing; the reliance on
past experiences as the basis for proposing new ideas. This was representative of Bourdieu’s suggestion
that “ . . . it is yesterday’s man who inevitably predominates us, since the present amounts to little
compared with the long past in the course of which we were formed and from which we result” [48]
(p. 79). Many of the propositions developed by the MUCH members were explicitly based on their
own past experiences, either directly through their own interactions or indirectly through various
forms of media. For example, one of the group wanted to reduce their maintenance burden, noting that
they wanted the shared interactions within the community to be focused on leisure rather than labour.
This idea was manifest in their design, which included a self-cleaning ceramic façade. One member
of the group explained that the idea had been based on a holiday to Vienna, where he visited Otto
Wagner’s ceramic fronted art nouveau apartments. This demonstrates how past experiences can be the
basis of creativity, as the individual transposed his knowledge of an architectural case study in a novel
way, rather than as a simple facsimile of the original.
Whilst “yesterday’s man” provided the impetus for creativity in this example, there were other
situations where the opposite was true. Bourdieu also argues that our reliance on past experiences to
inform future practices generates a “sense of limits”, in which all actions reproduce the “established
order” rather than genuinely innovative ideas [48] (p.164). He proposes that individuals place a
self-imposed demand for realism in their actions, which causes past experiences to be reproduced
and perpetuates certain ideas as being “sensible” and “reasonable” [48] (p. 79). The “sense of limits”
that I observed within the workshops was derived from two interrelated constraints. First, there were
examples in which groups regulated their actions to make “sensible” propositions. Second, there
were a number of situations in which the participants had ideas and desires that they were unable to
propose in spatial forms.
The self-regulating tendencies of the groups were evident in the way they dismissed ideas outside
of the cohousing orthodoxy. Whilst a number of people identified unusual ideas for sharing space,
including a brewery and a community cinema, these ideas were dismissed as unrealistic by others and
not included in their final designs. The designation of these ideas as unreasonable was because they
had never seen a housing community with a community cinema attached to it, but this in itself should
not have made the idea unreasonable. A small cinema space could take up a similar sized space as an
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art room or craft workshop; ideas that can be seen in various existing cohousing communities. The
barrier to creativity in this situation was that the participants had not seen one in the past, and thus
could not confidently envision what spatial form it would take or whether it would be affordable. As a
consequence, this self-regulation (if unchallenged) has the potential to close off opportunities for new
shared spaces and activities that might enable a cohousing group to create positive relationships and
contributions to their wider neighbourhood.
Another theme was that the group raised conceptual ideas that they were unable to propose
because they could not conceive the forms they would take. For example, one group proposed a shared
laundry space as a means of reducing their carbon footprint. Whilst the shift from individual to shared
washing and drying machines would have contributed to their aims, the group decided they wanted
to investigate a natural clothes drying system within the design of their building. The problem they
faced was their inability to conceive how this would work. The group raised vague ideas about “ . . .
some type of ‘dry greenhouse’”, but they were unable to progress with the idea any further without
the support of a designer. This highlights one of the key contributions that spatial agency can have in
cohousing-the potential to overcome the limitations to our own creativity by testing ideas that would
otherwise be discarded. The cohousers were proposing exciting ideas but were unable to evaluate the
realism of their ideas or convert many of their concepts into spatial propositions. These ideas would
be unlikely to make it into their design brief if they had no means of testing their feasibility.
During a structured reflection on the workshop, the MUCH members identified how negotiating
different ideas into the same formal design was a challenge. One member of the group noted that:
“ . . . it drove us to think ‘how would we manage that?’ What it throws up is that you can’t
move forward with those tensions in the group. We need a framework to overcome these issues . . .
otherwise you spend the time thinking ‘nobody is listening to me anymore’.”
In response to this, we decided to create a workshop in which each MUCH member had the
opportunity to express their ideas individually. The aim of this was to make clear and discuss the
different aspirations held within the group. We agreed that we needed to develop an alternative means
of expressing creativity that did not rely on traditional architectural design skills, and I worked with
two MUCH members to design a workshop in response to this.
6. Workshop Two: Narrative Workshop

One of the challenges of the design game workshop was that it tasked the participants to act as
“architects”. Whilst this did demonstrate the wide range of capabilities within the group, it also placed
the onus on them to propose the spatial manifestation of their desired shared practices, something
that paradoxically acted as a barrier to creativity. Discussing this with the group, it was suggested
that it would be interesting to explore other mediums of creativity that might allow them to be
propositional without having to express their ideas architecturally. I proposed using storytelling as a
way of overcoming these challenges and was asked to design a workshop in collaboration with one of
the MUCH members.
During the narrative workshop, I asked each MUCH member to tell a story describing a single
day in their imagined cohousing community. Participants were asked to suggest what they would do,
thinking about situations inside their home, the cohousing community, and in the wider neighbourhood
they would live in. To help the group develop these stories, we gave everyone a scenario within which
to frame their narratives, such as a Sunday in summer, a cold and rainy Tuesday, or Christmas Eve.
Following this, the whole workshop was repeated with a single change; the cohousers were asked to
tell a story based on the same scenario, but when they were 20 years older.
Much like the previous design game workshop, this exercise both enabled creative ideas to
emerge and highlighted the limits of the group’s creative potential. It quickly became clear that, rather
than proposing a radical vision of cohousing, the participants used the workshop to critique and
elaborate on the existing cohousing orthodoxy. The workshop showed how a sense of limits was
perpetuating the inclusion of common sharing practices seen in cohousing within their narrative, but
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equally generated opportunities for the cohousers to interrogate the impact of these norms within
specific situations.
For example, one member of the group based her narrative around her children visiting her over
Christmas, as they currently did at her present home. Unexpectedly, the participant generated an
additional constraint in her narrative She imagined that the cohousing community would have a guest
room (which is a common shared asset within the cohousing orthodoxy), but in her narrative this
room was overbooked. Her story proposed that her family had to stay at a hotel nearby, which she
argued was not ideal, but that she could not imagine another way of doing it. Through her narrative,
the MUCH member had effectively critiqued a “sensible” element of the cohousing orthodoxy as
insufficient to her needs, but also identified her own inability to propose an alternative proposition.
In a short discussion that followed the story, another cohouser said that they go away at Christmas
so the narrator’s children they could stay in her flat instead of a hotel. It would have been easy for
the participants to simply suggest that the community would need more shared guest rooms, but by
expressing their desired experiences a creative, social alternative emerged.
Other stories developed by the MUCH members expanded upon elements of the cohousing
orthodoxy, imagining a different relationship between the cohousing community and wider
neighbourhood. One of the stories described how the MUCH members were holding a meal for
socially isolated older people in the community. The story described how the meal would take
place in a large communal dining room, a space that is ubiquitous in the cohousing orthodoxy, and
demonstrated how this type of space could enable the MUCH group to enact the kind of social change
that they could not achieve in their current individual houses. This shows that whilst the individual
still retained a sense of limits by proposing a standard cohousing element, they also acted creatively
by reinterpreting its use to match their social and ethical dispositions. On one level, this story might
affect how the dining space could be designed, considering a different use of the space. Equally, the
story identified a social vision that could be explored in a multitude of different ways within the
design process.
When the workshop transitioned into telling a story that imagined the community in 20 years,
it became evident that the group were having a more difficult time imagining what their community
would be like. Many of the stories seemed to suggest that the community would start to look inwards
and that individuals might not have such strong relationships with the wider community. Some
suggested that shared spaces and activities might be used less as people became less active, whilst
others proposed that they would be used more because people were less able to attend other events
outside of their immediate community. It was noticeable that the stories at this stage had much
less clarity and posed fewer definitive uses and interactions than the previous sets of stories. This
highlighted the challenge facing the group; the need to imagine and respond to situations that were
unknown to them at the time, such as the capabilities and desires they might have later in their life.
7. Discussion
The examples discussed in this paper demonstrate how co-design processes enable older people
to investigate and test how sharing might shape their urban environment, and how different spatial
constraints can influence what forms of sharing are possible. Although the focus of the collaboration
with MUCH was not the development of traditional architectural plans, spatial agency did enable the
exploration of how sharing and collaboration might shape the form of their community. A central
component of this was the interrogation of the shared/private split within the community, with the
group exploring models with much smaller private dwellings in favour of more elaborate shared
facilities. Although the group agreed to adopt a fairly orthodox split between private and shared spaces,
spatial agency created opportunities for this decision to be made consciously, and with the implications
of different options properly investigated. The process of spatial agency did, however, influence
the group’s ideas about what form shared spaces should take. Whilst the cohousing orthodoxy is
for a single, centralised “common house” where all collective activity is centred, the MUCH group
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recognised the opportunities posed by having a diversity of shared spaces. Rather than pre-determining
the functions of these spaces, they felt it more important to create spaces with different spatial
characteristics that they could appropriate for different uses as they emerged. This position was in
recognition that the group’s needs would inevitably change as they grew older, but that the types of
shared activities the group might want to undertake in the future are unknown to them at present.
In addition to these specific spatial investigations, the process of creating an inclusive, creative
process was an equally important element of my role as a spatial agent. One of the ways that older
people are marginalised in society is through a widely held stereotype that they lack creativity [49]
(p. 25). This should not be understood as a failure of older people to be creative, but the consequence
of systemic conditions in which older people’s creativity is diminished or ignored. The two workshops
described in this paper show how adopting a spatial agency approach can help to develop a
shared discourse from which older people are empowered to be creative, and through which novel
opportunities for sharing emerge. By challenging the delineation of the social and spatial qualities of
cohousing, we were able to identify and respond to our own internalised limits that led us to accept
the existing cohousing orthodoxy. This, in turn, led to the development and testing of new ideas for
sharing spaces and activities, both inside and outside their proposed community, that would not have
otherwise be considered.
One of the ways that MUCH could express themselves in these workshops was the rejection of
normative ideas about ageing within their cohousing community. Although there was some discussion
about physical decline and building accessibility, the group were primarily driven by a positive vision
of themselves in older age, in which they would not be defined by their physiology. This was an
explicit response to the medicalisation of other housing options for older people, such as private
“sheltered” housing, of which they had reservations. One of the MUCH members referred to the
processes we developed as a form of “future-scoping”;
“I think one of the challenges for all of us, and you, is to come up with our own ageing, and not be
influenced by images of what older people look like. We are using each other to future-scope ourselves,
in space. That’s really exciting! ...It’s been a real challenge because we all have these different ideas
about our futures, and the shape and space needs to mirror and enable that.”
The capability to imagine possible futures is a key element of the cohousing development process,
and is particularly important for older people in making decisions about the homes and communities
they wish to grow older in, which are impacted by their “...uncertainty about their future selves.” [50]
(p. 48). The spatial agency approach offered opportunities to explore possible futures because the focus
was not purely limited to defining the architectonic form the community would take. Rather than
placing the onus on the individual to imagine whether staying or leaving their home would provide
them with a better future, a spatial agency approach to cohousing enables the individual to explore
and construct a future they actually desire, and to examine whether this vision is achievable.
Through the sharing of space, assets, knowledge, and practices, cohousing enables older people to
increase their ability to reshape neighbourhoods, cities, and everyday experiences. Despite the interest
in cohousing in the UK, few new cohousing communities have come to fruition. Cohousing groups face
a number of challenges, not least the direct competition with better resourced commercial developers,
particularly in desirable urban locations [23] (p. 119). It is perhaps time to question whether the 25
dwelling, single-site cohousing community that is promoted within mainstream cohousing discourse
is viable, and instead move to investigate innovative responses. Spatial agency provides a suitable
platform for architects to contribute to this and support the emergence of new ideas that challenge
some of the norms within cohousing. Whilst the inclusion of architectural expertise at such an early
stage of the development process presents a number of challenges, including how such a collaboration
can be funded, it also provides a unique opportunity to generate creative solutions to some of the
issues that cohousing groups face.
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Funding: This research received no external funding.

Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank the members of Manchester Urban Cohousing for their
contributions, insight and support during the course of our collaboration.
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Article
Coworking, the Sharing Economy, and the City:
Which Role for the ‘Coworking Entrepreneur’?
Giacomo Durante * and Margherita Turvani
Dipartimento di Progettazione e pianificazione in ambienti complessi (DPPAC), Università IUAV di Venezia,
Santa Croce 1957, 30135 Venezia, Italy; margheri@iuav.it
* Correspondence: gdurante@iuav.it
Received: 16 July 2018; Accepted: 30 August 2018; Published: 3 September 2018
Abstract: Sharing economy platforms enabled by information and communication technologies (ICTs)
are facilitating the diffusion of collaborative workplaces. Coworking spaces are emerging as a distinctive
phenomenon in this context, not only fostering knowledge transfer and facilitating innovation, but also
affecting the urban and socio-economic fabric contributing to urban regeneration processes at both the
local scale and the city scale. Although the positive impacts of coworking on the urban environment are
documented, there is still little or no evidence of the economic viability of coworking businesses, and a
“coworking bubble” has been evoked. Given the lack of data, a national survey was set up of Italian
coworking businesses, aimed at assessing the relevance of internal organizational factors (size, occupancy,
profitability, services provided) for the sustainability of coworking businesses. By presenting the results
of the survey, we argue that the sustainability and viability of the coworking model is highly dependent
on internal factors, strictly related to the entrepreneurial action of coworking managers.
Keywords: sharing economy; sharing platform; coworking; coworking space; coworking business;
collaborative workplaces; urban regeneration; entrepreneurial action
1. Introduction
Globalization and information and communication technologies (ICTs) are continuously
transforming the relationship between geographical locations, spaces and economic activities [1],
shaping urban and regional geographies [2]. Within this general trend, the rise of sharing/collaborative
forms of the economy is now accompanied by a debate regarding the range of their potential benefits
in terms of economic growth [3] and sustainable development [4,5].
The technological innovation driven by ICTs matches important changes in urban areas and the labour
market. Traditional productive areas are being abandoned and traditional businesses (manufacturing) are
relocating to other areas. High skilled workers—in terms of internet and digital skills—find their own way
to enter the market, given the fact that their new competencies are not covered by traditional enterprises
and the shrinking traditional sectors. These choices happen in a situation of individual scarcity of financial
and banking capital, and necessitates innovative solutions for these new enterprises, made up mostly by
individual freelancers, start-ups and micro-enterprises. Within this framework, work and workplaces are
being radically modified [6], giving rise to collaborative workplaces, such as hacker spaces, maker spaces,
fabrication laboratories (Fab Labs) and coworking spaces.
Coworking is often regarded as the “new model of work”, a typical case of the sharing and
collaborative economy [7]. Its appearance and diffusion have been related to the more general
growth of the so-called “creative class” [8] in the knowledge and creative industries. The rationale
for coworking is found in the need of knowledge workers and freelancers to work in a community,
sharing not only know-how and skills, but also a physical space. Coworking spaces (CSs) are shared
workplaces made up by open space desks and other facilities and services offered and organized by
coworking businesses (CBs), run by coworking managers, providers or proprietors.

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 83
CSs exhibit both access to a shared physical space and the sharing of intangible assets [9].
CBs create advantages for the working community by boosting knowledge transfer, opening new job
opportunities and offering shared physical assets.
The diffusion of coworking is the result of the interest from CS utilizers (CUs) toward the
services supplied by CBs. In fact, CBs offer an array of innovative services that differ from traditional
enterprises, targeting the needs of both “lone eagles” [6] (i.e., individual freelance workers) and new
kinds of enterprises, most notably start-ups. To do so, CBs are required to meet the new market
demands of highly-skilled workers and knowledge-intensive activities.
It has been claimed that new collaborative workspaces are largely located in a few creative cities
that are acting as “coworking hotspots” [6] (p. 11). Coworking is thus an urban phenomenon that
shows its potential in terms of the regeneration and revitalization of urban environments. It contributes
to job creation [10,11], to the reuse of former industrial buildings turned into vacant spaces [12,13],
to the development of creative districts by enhancing the “innovation ecosystem” of cities [14], to the
transformation of public spaces [15], and to the attraction of other types of activities inside the urban
area [11].
Ponzini and Rossi [16] argue that the growth of the urban creative class and Florida’s creative
city theory, whereby the competitiveness of cities depends on the emergence of creative activities,
fueled a variety of interventions and urban policies targeting both the urban physical fabric and the
economic fabric. Among them, the opening of new spaces for the creative class, such as CSs, is viewed
by some authors as a sort of “urban panacea”, promoting successful urban regeneration policies.
However, against this widespread idea of considering coworking as a positive phenomenon, some
authors have suggested the presence of a “coworking bubble” [6,17,18], casting a shadow on the
sustainability of the coworking model.
In 2017, we conducted research in Porto Marghera (Venice, Italy), a former chemical industrial
site and now one of the largest Italian brownfields, which is undergoing a slow process of urban
regeneration, especially in the northern part.
In this context, the search for new business opportunities as well as the challenges posed by the
reuse of vacant spaces located on the former industrial site, led some local entrepreneurs to consider
coworking as a possible alternative for the relaunch of their underused areas and vacant buildings.
Given the lack of data on the economic viability and operating conditions of Italian CBs, required by
Venetian entrepreneurs to evaluate different investment possibilities for their area, we wanted to answer
to the following research questions: (1) where are Italian CBs located? (2) Are CBs economically viable?
(3) Is the intensity of use of CS the key to their economic viability? (4) What are the internal factors and
operational conditions ensuring the efficiency and the success of a CB? (5) Are CSs cheaper than traditional
office spaces?
The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, it wants to contribute to situating coworking in
the urban debate, deepening its potential for the renewal of urban areas; on the other hand, it seeks
to understand whether coworking represents an effective response to the needs of new enterprises,
and to what extent coworking promoters are capable of supplying solutions to such needs.
In the first desk research phase, we produced a national coworking census, mapping Italian CBs
to explore their location. Secondly, to find evidence regarding the economic viability of coworking,
we conducted a national survey of CBs. The survey was carried out in spring 2017, submitting a
questionnaire to the coworking managers of Italian CBs. Finally, we compared the prices for access to
CSs to those for the rent of traditional office spaces. We argue that the economic viability of CBs—and
therefore their ability to produce positive effects on urban fabrics and more generally on cities—is
highly dependent on internal factors, strictly related to the choices of coworking promoters and
managers. We highlight the important role of the coworking promoter/manager, whose organizational
and marketing choices can determine the success of the CB, and secondarily trigger spillover effects
for the urban and economic fabrics.
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 83
The paper is organized as follow: in the Section 2 we situate coworking in the broader sharing
economy debate. In the Section 3, we explore the possible impacts of this phenomenon on the city, with
reference to the relevant literature. In the fourth Section 4 we introduce the scope, the methodology
and the description of our survey. The main results and key findings of our survey are presented in
the Section 5. A discussion (Section 6) and conclusion (Section 7) follow.
2. Coworking in the Sharing Economy Debate

The sharing economy is emerging as a global trend now diffused in different economic activities,
such as retail, logistics, transportation, tourism, and in various spheres such as the labour market
organization, finance, and office spaces [19]. Their common feature is that they facilitate access to goods
and services, on the demand and supply side, through digital platforms [20]. Being a widespread
phenomenon, the sharing economy is affecting the entire economy. The increasing number of activities
involving sharing practices is shaping cities [21], and rural areas are also now experiencing some of
the transformative effects of the sharing economy [22].
The spread of sharing practices has been facilitated by the advent of ICTs and digitisation, enabling
both the creation of digital sharing platforms and the possibility of working from different locations.
However, the sharing economy, in contrast to Friedman’s idea of a globalized world becoming flat [23],
has proved to be affected by the spatial dimension, and represents an urban phenomenon that “directly
affects the urban economy at both the neighbourhood and city-wide levels” [21] (p. 259). In the same
way, the emergence of ICTs and digitisation also changed the idea of work, transforming communities
and workplaces [2] and leading to what has been called the “third wave of virtual work” [24]. The first
wave was characterized by the increased use of personal computers and emails, creating the possibility
to work as self-employed freelancers; the second wave occurred when companies started to take the
cost advantages related to virtual work, despite the disadvantages related to their inferior commitment
to one employee. These workers started to feel the need to be part of a community and to “renew
social contacts” [25] (p. 576) between them. This demand is producing the “third wave of virtual
work”, whereby virtual workers “physically reunite and retether to specific spaces” [24], giving rise
to a new kind of “localized spaces for collaborative innovation” [14] (p. 1), such as CSs. Within this
process, sharing economy platforms are facilitating the participation of individuals in communities,
offering new possibilities for virtual workers not only to physically gather, but also to cooperate
easily and to take advantage of less expensive online services, such as e-commerce, e-marketing,
e-procurement, e-assistance.
CSs can be generally defined as “shared workplaces utilised by different sorts of knowledge
professionals, mostly freelancers, working in various degree of specialisation in the vast domain of the
knowledge industry” [18] (p. 194). In practical terms, CSs are open space offices furnished with desks
and internet connections—and often also meeting rooms, private office spaces and other equipped
rooms—that are rented to freelancers, professionals, start-ups or micro-businesses.
Since the opening of the first CS in 2005 in San Francisco [18,26], CSs have been increasing
worldwide at an impressive pace. As reported in 2012, their number doubled each year since 2006 [27],
and is still growing; the same happened to the number of coworking members worldwide [28–32].
The phenomenon of coworking is generally analysed within the sharing economy debate [9,18,20,22],
as it involves both “the access of shared physical assets (office, infrastructure, cafeteria, etc.) and the
sharing of intangible assets, such as (information, knowledge, etc.)” [9] (p. 6). Some authors say that
CSs reflect “the collective-driven, networked approach of the open-source-idea translated into physical
space” [33] (p. 202). Others claim that coworking can be associated with the sharing economy, as the latter
is also characterized by the possibility to access under-utilized resources and physical assets [34,35], for the
purpose of maximizing the utilization of “‘surplus’ or ‘idle’ capacity” of those assets [36]. Even if the
boundaries of the sharing economy are difficult to define precisely and in the relevant literature “there
is no ‘shared’ consensus on what activities comprise the ‘sharing economy’” [19] (p. 6), some authors
tried to produce a classification of sharing economy activities and platforms. According to Richardson,
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 83
the phenomenon can be better understood “as a series of performances, rather than a coherent set of
economic practices” [20] (p. 127). The performances identified are: the enactment of a community, the access
to common resources, and the collaboration between participants [20]. From our perspective, coworking is
characterised by all these performances. Following another approach, Codagnone and Martens divide
the existing sharing platforms into three categories: “(a) recirculation of goods (second-hand and surplus
goods markets); (b) increased asset utilization (production factors markets); and (c) service and labour
exchanges” [19] (p. 10). According to these authors, coworking can be associated with initiatives falling
inside the second and third categories, as CSs facilitate respectively the recirculation of idle assets, vacant
or underused spaces, and the creation of new job opportunities through networking.
3. Coworking and Urban Area Renewal

While many authors have written about the definition of coworking and CS [6,14,18,26,37],
few have discussed the effects of shared work practices on the evolution of cities and the potential
of CSs to transform the urban fabric. Only recently, the potential role of CSs in stimulating urban
regeneration processes and “micro-scale physical transformations” [15] (p. 3) has been discussed,
viewing coworking as a means of providing an effective alternative for the reuse of former industrial
or under-utilised buildings [38].
According to this view, the urban regeneration potential of CSs is twofold. Firstly, the reuse of
vacant or underused buildings is contributing to the recycling of idle urban assets, thus contributing
to the realization of a circular economy, centred on the reuse of assets that have completed their life
cycle, giving them new life and minimising energy and material waste. CSs, seen as the answer to
the new organizational needs of knowledge workers, fit into the challenges posed by the re-cycling
of the urban fabric [39], moving from deindustrialization to a new phase of economic growth. It is
worth noting that CSs, in order to differentiate themselves from traditional office spaces, “tend to
emphasize their idiosyncratic, bespoke ‘Post-Fordist’ design aesthetics” [32] (p. 10) and their location
in former industrial buildings responds to such desires. Many CSs have already opened inside
industrial era buildings [32]. There are indeed several examples of this trend: Betahaus in Berlin’s
Kreuzberg, a space of 3000 sqm now converted into a hub for creative start-ups; Ponyride in Detroit,
a formerly derelict building now home of a business incubator and collaborative workspaces [40]; the
311 coworking space in Verona (Italy), opened in 2015 on formerly industrial land close to the city
centre, a collaborative open space of 2000 sqm [41]. These examples show the potential of CBs—and
in general of shared service accommodation—in “reusing and revaluing decaying properties” [12]
(p. 118). Furthermore, the opening of CBs is also impacting positively on the quality of the surrounding
neighbourhood, increasing the attractiveness of the area by occasionally improving public spaces and
generating socio-economic and micro-regeneration effects [15]. Secondly, according to other authors,
coworking is capable of producing some “soft” impacts on the city. The emergence of new forms of
creative production has favoured the concentration of creative activities in some places [42], benefitting
from urban density and the generation of proximity spill-overs [43]. Some authors study “the creative
city” or the “knowledge-based city” [44,45] and the appearance of innovation districts [46] shaping the
urban economy. This phenomenon is seen as very positive, and politicians are looking with more and
more interest to the potential of creative activities to foster the competitiveness of cities, by leveraging
the “urban creative class” [16] (p. 1052). In line with this, CBs represent a strategic model, acting
“as interfaces with the creative milieu in the city and beyond” [47] (p. 133), and boosting innovation
processes in the city at the individuals and community levels [48]. Kojo and Nenonen, studying the
evolution of CBs, identified regional development as one driver for the evolution of coworking [49],
while Buksh and Mouat say that the presence of knowledge workers has “wider economic and social
benefits across the city fringes and regional centres” [2] (p. 22).
Of course, the effects of CBs on the urban environment arising from the two approaches described
above are deeply intertwined, as the concentration of creative activities is “the result of both material
and immaterial transformations” [42] (p. 63).
32
Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 83
Despite coworking being celebrated as a positive urban phenomenon, able to enhance competitiveness,
foster innovation and contribute to urban regeneration, some authors have evoked the presence of a
“coworking bubble”. Back in 2012, Cashman observed that Spain, despite the economic crisis and the high
level of unemployment, exhibited the most pronounced growth of CSs [17]. According to other authors,
the bubble could be explained by both the precariousness of the knowledge workers, “pushed to become
freelancers” and “to seek asylum in CS” [6] (p. 17), and the low profitability of CBs, frequently forced to
seek public subsidies [50]. In the debate on urban regeneration policies, coworking is considered by some
authors as a sort of “urban panacea”. From our perspective, coworking is an entrepreneurial activity that
could also represent an innovative way to reuse vacant buildings and regenerate urban areas. As we have
described, while some authors explored the influence of CSs on the urban environment, their contributions
focus more on the effects of creative activities, rather than exploring the preconditions for the appearance
of “urban creative concentrations” [42]. More particularly, in the case of CSs, there is little or no evidence
of the role played by internal factors and operational conditions in contributing to the sustainability of the
coworking model. To fill this gap, we decided to investigate these aspects, submitting a questionnaire to
Italian coworking managers/promoters.

The purpose of the research into Italian CBs, conducted in early 2017, was to collect data about
the ongoing experiences in Italy to understand their conditions of operability, economic sustainability,
space uses and organization in different urban contexts.
This research was set up to answer to the questions posed by some entrepreneurs, who are
looking at coworking as a possible business to relaunch vacant or underused areas located in the Venice
mainland, inside Porto Marghera, a former chemical industrial hub and now one of the biggest Italian
brownfields, also included in the Italian National Priority List [51]. In this context, coworking might offer a
possible innovative solution to facilitate an urban regeneration process and the reuse of vacant buildings,
as suggested by Ginelli for the Milan case [52], considering also the track record of successful experiences
of reuse and soft regeneration associated with collaborative workspaces and coworking [40,53].
Investors are looking at the possibility to start a coworking business in the area, and our work was
aimed at responding to their need to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the coworking model,
looking at ongoing experiences to evaluate the economic viability of coworking, in order to develop
different investment scenarios for their area. In order to offer precise indications to local entrepreneurs,
given the lack of meaningful data about the Italian operational context of CBs, we investigated the internal
and external factors conducive to the growth of such businesses, the importance of entrepreneurial actions
and the contractual forms of successful initiatives, setting up a national survey of CBs.
The survey was designed to understand the conditions for the success of a CB. On the one
hand, the economic viability and sustainability of a CB is dependent on external factors: its location,
the activities and amenities in the surrounding area, the accessibility of the structure. These are all
preconditions for the occurrence of “urban creative concentrations” [42], and hence factors affecting
the success and the outcomes of a CB. On the other hand, the viability of a CB is related to internal
factors, such as the availability of enough space to meet the demand, the differentiation of the working
environment into different ambiances suitable for different purposes, the quality of the services
provided, which is then reflected in the physical layout of the space; but also organisational factors,
such as the types of contracts offered, the price paid to rent a desk, the flexibility of the opening hours
and days, and more generally the atmosphere perceived by the CUs.
Our research aimed to explore some relevant factors of the success of CBs, looking at their location,
internal factors and operational conditions.
The research was carried out in three different phases. The first phase was the creation of a
coworking census at the national level, and the mapping of Italian CBs, aimed at evaluating the
dimensions of the Italian coworking phenomenon and at exploring the location of CBs. CBs were
mapped using the results from Google Maps search engine with the keyword “coworking”.
33
Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 83
The second phase aimed at understanding the operational conditions of CBs already in business.
In this phase, an online questionnaire was sent to Italian coworking managers and providers.
The research questions guiding the preparation of the questionnaire were: (1) how important is
entrepreneurial action for the success of the CB? (2) Are there any specific distinctive features of
successful CBs? (3) What kind of contracts and services do CBs offer to their CUs?
The preparation of the questionnaire was anticipated by two site visits to CSs in Italy, one in
Mestre (Venice mainland) and one in Verona. The first location was chosen because it is part of the
biggest network of affiliated CBs in Italy; the second location was 311 in Verona, which—as already
mentioned in the introduction—represents a relevant case study, considering that it opened in a former
industrial building and contributed to the revitalization of the surrounding area. Along with the site
visits, we carried out desk research into the websites of coworking providers (both single and affiliated
CBs), to understand how they are organised and to provide a taxonomy of the different supplementary
rooms and services offered by CBs. The taxonomy was useful to better tailor the questionnaire.
The questionnaire was made up of 37 questions—comprising multiple choice questions,
dichotomous questions and semantic differential questions—covering the most important
organizational and economical aspects of CBs. The questionnaire was sent by email to the coworking
managers of 413 coworking spaces of the 495 that were recorded during the first phase of the research;
a total of 82 coworking managers did not provide a valid email address.
We collected 128 complete questionnaires with a response rate of 31%.
CS, the shared working environment, is what characterizes a CB. Therefore, we grouped the
respondents according to the rate of occupation of the open space desks. This variable may be a proxy
for the economic sustainability and is the principal internal factor and operational condition affecting
the viability of CBs. This choice is in line with the survey carried out by Deskmag, an online magazine
about coworking, that shows that most of the revenue of a coworking space comes from the rent of
open space desks [54]. Open space desk occupation is directly connected to the economic viability of
the CB, as each user pays to rent a desk first and this allows CUs to use the other possible facilities.
CBs were grouped in three categories based on the reported rate of occupancy of the offered open space
desks during the previous six months. The three categories were: low performance, comprising CBs
where the percentage of occupancy was less than 50%; medium performance, with a level of occupancy
between 50% and 75%; and high performance, with occupancy of more than 75%. We analysed these
three groups of CBs in relation to the other variables that we investigated in the questionnaire, such as
the dimensions of their coworking space, the length of their period of activity, the number of open
space desks, the types of the contracts offered to users, the profitability and the level of cost associated
with each type of contract, the presence of individual office rooms and the level of saturation associated,
the possibility to use meeting rooms, the different kinds of services provided, and the opening times.
In the third phase, we focused on the rental expenses for the use of a coworking spaces. As coworking
spaces are often regarded as a cheap way for freelancers to rent a work space that they could not otherwise
afford in a traditional office, we collected information about the price per square meter of different Italian
CSs. Then, we compared them with the data on office spaces rental values provided by the Italian Revenue
Agency. The purpose was to test whether Italian CSs are cheaper than traditional offices.
5. Results
The results are presented in three separate sections. In the Section 1, we provide some insights
based on our national census of CSs. In the Section 2, we present the key findings regarding the
questionnaire survey, focusing on the physical arrangement of CSs (i.e., the factors which characterise
the layout of a coworking space) and on the organizational and managerial aspects. In the Section 7
we compare the rent prices of CSs with rent prices of traditional office spaces.
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5.1. Mapping Italian Coworking Businesses

The census of Italian CBs registered the presence of 495 CBs. In Figure 1, Italian CBs are aggregated
by municipality and displayed in relation to the inhabitants of each municipality, distinguishing CBs
located in municipalities with more than 250,000 inhabitants. The map shows that CBs are located
predominantly in the north of Italy. Despite coworking being a phenomenon generally associated
with big cities, Italian CBs are also located in small cities and towns. In fact, cities with more than
250,000 inhabitants account for the 37% of the mapped CBs, while the 46% are situated in municipalities
with less than 100,000 inhabitants. The biggest concentration of CBs is in Milan and its metropolitan
area, accounting for the 20% of total Italian CBs.
Figure 1. Map of CBs by municipality.
5.2. Results of the National Survey on Coworking Businesses

The indicator according to which we chose to evaluate the performance of CBs was the occupancy
rate of open space desks. Based on this variable, we grouped the CBs into three performance categories.
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This resulted in 76 CBs associated with low performance, 24 with medium performance, and 28 with
high performance (see the percentages in Figure 2).
Figure 2. Share of respondents by performance category.
These results were then cross-referenced with the information regarding the other variables
investigated, highlighting some differences between high performance, medium performance and low
performance CBs.
5.2.1. Longevity and Dimension

The first variable we investigated was the timespan the CB had been in activity. As shown
in Figure 3, a significantly wider share of high-performance CBs had been in business for three
years or more than the low-performance CBs. The low-performance CBs were characterised by a
shorter time-span of activity than high-performance CBs. The data showed that the share of CBs
that opened less than one year before the survey was 28% for low-performance CBs and 7% for
high-performance CBs.
Figure 3. Timespan of activity by performance category.
The second aspect we considered in relation to performance was the dimension of the CS
provided in each CB. As summarized in Figure 4, a considerable share of high-performance CBs
are characterised by a large CS: one in four high-performance CBs is bigger than 800 sqm, while only
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4% of low-performance CBs are bigger than 800 sqm. Beside this, it is worth noting that almost half of
the Italian CBs (49%) were found to be small.
Figure 4. Dimension of CSs by performance category.
As shown in Table 1, the average floor space occupied by open space desks also reflected this
difference, even considering the trimmed mean and discarding outlier values, which resulted mainly
from the presence of very large CSs affecting the average values. The standard deviation of the
dimensions of the CS of high-performance CBs was also higher than that of the medium-performance
CBs and low-performance CBs, underlining the fact that the floor space occupied by open space desks
in high-performance CBs is also more variable.
Table 1. Mean, trimmed mean and standard deviation of the dimension of open space by performance
category (sqm).
Low Performance Medium Performance High Performance

Mean 95 127 210
Trimmed mean 20% 80 98 159
Standard deviation 87 150 269
According to the results for the dimension of the CSs, high-performance CBs turned out to have
on average a higher number of open space desks (see Table 2).
Table 2. Mean, trimmed mean and standard deviation of the number of desks in open space by
performance category (units).
Low Performance Medium Performance High Performance

Mean 15 19 36
Trimmed mean 20% 13 15 26
Standard deviation 13 23 55
5.2.2. Flexibility and Profitability of Contracts

A third aspect investigated was the flexibility of the contracts offered to the users of the open
space, represented by the different types of contracts (daily, weekly, monthly or annual) offered by
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each CB. As shown in Figure 5, the share of high-performance CBs offering four kinds of contract was
substantially lower than the contracts offered by low-performance CBs: more than a half of the CBs
turned out to offer only one kind of contract. Regarding the types of contracts offered (see Figure 6),
the main differences between high-performance and low-performance CBs was the proportion of CBs
offering daily contracts and weekly contracts, while the difference in proportion offering monthly
contracts and annual contracts was much smaller.
Figure 5. Number of contracts offered by performance category.
Figure 6. Types of contracts offered by performance category (percentages calculated from the total
number of answers received for each type of contract).
We investigated the profitability associated with the renting contracts. It was measured by asking
coworking managers to indicate a percentage range of profit associated with each type of contract in the
previous six months.
The profitability of daily contracts was generally low, and only a few low-performance CBs
presented a high share of profitability (Figure 7).
Weekly contracts turned out to be the worst contract in terms of profitability for every performance
category. Also, 30% of low-performance CBs and up to the 57% of high-performance CBs did not even
offer weekly contracts.
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Monthly contracts (Figure 8) was the most profitable in each category of CBs. High profitability
(80–100%) was obviously more frequent for high-performance and medium-performance CBs. In coherence
with this data, a low level of profitability (0–20%) appeared more recurrently for low-performance CBs.
Figure 7. Shares of profitability associated with daily contracts by performance category (last six months).
Figure 8. Shares of profitability associated with monthly contracts by performance category (last six months).
The situation with regard to annual contracts (see Figure 9) was similar.
We then asked coworking managers which kind of contract is the most profitable.
Monthly contracts turned out to be the most profitable for medium-performance and high-performance
CBs, followed by daily contracts. For low performance CBs, daily contracts were reported to be the
most profitable (Figure 10).
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Figure 9. Share of profitability associated with annual contracts by performance category (last six months).
Figure 10. Most profitable contracts by performance category.
In terms of administrative costs, some contracts were costlier than others. The respondents
reported that the costliest contract is the daily contract (see Figure 11), and this was found to be a
common result in all three performance categories.
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Figure 11. Costliest contracts by performance category.
5.2.3. Occupancy and Services Provided

As discovered during the visit to CSs and using the information found on coworking providers’
websites, a common feature of CBs is the presence of individual office spaces.
This trend was confirmed by the data collected during the survey, as 69% of the respondents
declared that their CSs were equipped with individual office spaces.
By comparing the occupancy of individual office spaces in the six months immediately prior to the
survey (see Figure 12), high-performance CBs were found to have a better level of occupancy, followed
by medium-performance CBs, while low-performance CBs showed significantly lower percentages
of occupancy.
Figure 12. Shares of occupancy of individual office spaces by performance category (last six months).
The presence of meeting rooms is another key element of CSs. High-performance CBs were found to
have the highest number of meeting rooms (Figure 13). In fact, 29% of high-performance CB managers
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reported that their space is equipped with three or more meeting rooms, while only 12% of low-performance
CBs arranged their spaces in the same way, as most of them were generally equipped with only one
meeting room.
Figure 13. Number of meeting rooms by performance category.
Some services, such as a fast internet connection and printers were found to be provided by
almost every CB (Figure 14). For other services the analysis highlighted some differences between
high-performance, medium-performance and low-performance CBs: the presence of a bar/restaurant and
a kitchen could be observed more in high-performance and medium-performance CBs; the presence of a
relaxation space, parking lots, a garden and vending machines was more frequent in medium-performance
CBs; bicycle racks and landlines were services offered more commonly by high-performance CBs.
Figure 14. Services offered by performance category (percentages calculated from the total number of
answers received for each service).
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5.2.4. Timetable
The coworking managers were asked to indicate the opening hours and days of their CSs.
A significant number of high-performance CBs reported being open every day, while low-performance
CBs tend to offer fewer opening days (Figure 15). The same situation was observed for the opening hours
(Figure 16).
Figure 15. Opening days by performance category.
Figure 16. Opening hours by performance category.
5.3. Comparison of Coworking and Traditional Office Rent Prices

We now turn to the comparison of rental prices between traditional offices and coworking spaces,
since in the literature the success and the diffusion of these new types of workplaces is related not
only to better services, but also to their being a cheaper alternative to the traditional office. By looking
at some of the coworking providers’ websites, we collected data on the open space surface and the
relative monthly fees, considering the minimum monthly fee for renting a desk in an open space.
Using this information, we then calculated the price per square meter, and we compared this value
to that for traditional offices in the same area. The monthly rental price per square meter for offices
can be found at the Italian Revenue Agency (Agenzia delle Entrate) webGIS, offering minimum and
maximum prices for different areas [55]. We used the latest data available (year 2016, I semester),
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considering the mean between the maximum and minimum values. Other related useful information
pertained to the quality of available spaces, as in some areas there are different prices according to the
state of maintenance of the office spaces.
Figure 17 below shows that the price per square meter of CSs were much higher than those
associated with traditional offices in every location we considered.
Figure 17. Comparison between average prices per square meter of CSs and traditional offices.
6. Discussion
In this paragraph, we discuss the results of the national survey, and we compare them with data
from a selection of surveys and forecasts conducted by Deskmag. These are global surveys aimed
at exploring the general trends of coworking worldwide, and the only studies on coworking also
providing some data about the organization of CSs and the profitability of CBs, which are useful for
coworking promoters starting a new business or that are already in business.
In line with the survey carried out by Deskmag in 2012 [27], which registered a relevant increase
in CBs located in rural areas, our mapping of Italian CBs shows that there is a significant share of CBs
located outside big municipalities, even though coworking maintains its urban character in large “hotspot”
cities, as suggested by Moriset [6]. The spread of CBs to many small municipalities or medium-sized
towns reflects the distribution of the population in Italy, where only few municipalities have more
than 250,000 inhabitants [56]. Agglomerations at different scales, among smaller municipalities, around
medium-sized cities and in large urban areas create opportunities for creative activities in many different
locations, and the territorial distribution and concentration of CBs reflect those opportunities.
The main result of our survey is that the success of any CB, in terms of the intensity of occupancy
of the provided desks, which is directly related to the profitability of the CB, is highly dependent
on internal factors. These are physical factors: the high level of occupation of open space desks that
characterises high-performance CBs is associated with the dimensions of the CS, showing that large
CSs are the most attractive. This result is also in line with the latest coworking forecast provided by
Deskmag [30], which shows that CSs are becoming bigger, and the increasing size is associated with
higher profitability, as also reported in a previous survey by Deskmag [27]. High-performance CBs
also show a higher level of occupancy of individual offices. The presence of these spaces, according to
Deskmag’s latest survey [29], is one of the new elements in a CS, as CBs are expected to show a higher
share of individual offices [30]. In our survey, CBs with a medium and high level of performance are
those offering more services to coworking users. The factors contributing to the attractiveness of CSs
are also organisational: the success of any CB appears to be related to the opening times and to the
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variety of contractual forms. High-performance CBs offer a lower number of contractual forms, mainly
monthly and annual contracts, lowering the turnover of CUs and consequently increasing the intensity
of use in time. Of course, these contracts are more profitable exactly because they guarantee a higher
occupancy rate, leading to a selection of coworking members through time.
The second important result of the survey is to show the role of coworking managers and
coworking promoters, confirming the relevance of strategic choices and investments, which might
be related to the mission of the proprietors of CSs, and to the interaction with proactive users.
As observed by the investigation of Spinuzzi [26], CBs differentiate themselves from the others by
arranging the CS in different ways, according to their location, design, flexibility and professionalism.
These differentiators are highly reliant on the choices of the coworking managers “who structure,
design, furnish, and run their sites based on their understanding and model of coworking” [26] (p. 418).
According to Parrino, the choice of coworking manager could also facilitate the exchange of knowledge
between CUs, by providing online platforms, networking events and coaching [57].
Another important factor affecting the success of a CB turned out to be its longevity,
as high-performance CBs turned out to have been in the business for three or more years. Again, this
finding confirms the results of Deskmag’s second global survey, which showed that “72% of all
coworking spaces become profitable after more than two years in operation” [54]. The rationale of
this finding could be that, provided the high risks distinctive of this type of business, the fact that
highly-skilled digital workers and new enterprises require innovative services and solutions, and the
scarcity of financial capital associated with these activities, the oldest cohort of CBs are the most
effective and the most able to overcome risk and obstacles to their successful operation.
A third result pertains to the comparison of the price paid in traditional and CB spaces: although
coworking is often considered a cheap alternative to traditional offices, our data show that CUs spend
more to rent a desk in a CS. This result indicates that CUs might prefer to pay for the “liquidity” of
their choices and short-term perspectives in their own personal business. They are willing to pay more
to have flexibility, to have more services, and to have fewer constraints, especially avoiding the length
of office lease agreements, which according to Italian law last for at least six years.
7. Conclusions
Coworking is considered by many authors to be an activity falling under the umbrella of the
sharing economy. It is characterized by the tendency of highly-skilled workers to physically gather
in some locations to take advantage of proximity and knowledge exchange, a process facilitated by
digital platforms. In this way, coworking involves sharing both physical assets (office, common spaces)
and intangible assets (knowledge, skills). Coworking is also generally regarded as a positive urban
phenomenon, fuelling regeneration processes and enhancing competitiveness, even if some authors
evoke the presence of a “coworking bubble”.
Following the interest of some local entrepreneurs in the coworking model as a possible innovative
way to relaunch their vacant properties located in the former industrial site of Porto Marghera
(Venice, Italy), our study investigated coworking as an entrepreneurial activity, which opens up
the possibility to offer new market opportunities enabled by digitization and urban regeneration.
We claimed that the lack of data on the dimensions of the coworking phenomenon in Italy, on the
one hand, and about the organizational and economic aspects of CBs on the other hand, made any
generalization about the sustainability of coworking untenable. Sharing the concerns regarding a
“coworking bubble” and of the low sustainability of CBs, we decided to investigate the economic
viability of Italian CBs, looking at the role of internal factors and exploring how those factors can
contribute to the sustainability of the coworking model. In fact, although in the last few years a lot of
literature has been produced around the concept of coworking, the factors contributing to the success
of CBs seem to be overlooked. This is why we collected data on various determinants, physical and
intangible, that might enhance the success and the viability of coworking as an innovative model of
regeneration, creating value for decaying properties and vacant buildings.
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A national survey was carried out in three phases: firstly, we conducted a national census of
Italian CBs, mapping the results at the municipal scale; then we submitted an online questionnaire to
coworking managers and providers, investigating the arrangement of the space, the services provided
and their profitability; finally, we compared the rent prices of CSs and traditional offices, to understand
whether the preferences of CUs are related to the greater affordability of CSs.
The major contribution of our work is that we recognized that coworking is an entrepreneurial
activity, emerging to answer to the needs of highly-skilled workers and new kinds of enterprises, such
as start-ups. These new enterprises are different from traditional enterprises as they are characterised
by high level human capital and scarce financial resources, and thus they need different kinds of
services. We found that CUs are willing to pay more to get access to CSs precisely because of the
opportunities and services inside CSs. These opportunities are the result of the entrepreneurial action
of coworking promoters, in their attempt to respond to the necessities of flexible jobs.
The other contribution of this paper is the proposal of a rough ranking of efficiency in Italian
coworking initiatives. Based on our findings, the largest businesses, by practicing simpler contractual
schemes, reach higher utilization and, after a few years of operation, better financial performance.
The role of the coworking manager is emphasized and it is strictly related to the success of the CB: the
entrepreneurial ability of coworking promoters in attracting CUs and in making the right investment
choices is the enabling condition for CBs to become viable, strengthening the affiliation between CUs
and the CB, and sustaining a working community. Following Richardson [20], we consider coworking
as being characterised by a series of performances—the enactment of a community, the access to
common resources and the collaboration between participants—and we believe that the occurrence of
these performances is deeply affected by the choices of coworking managers.
We suggest that further research should look at the characteristics of CUs, to investigate whether
the success of CBs is also related to the typology, structure and operating conditions of start-ups or
other businesses using their CS. In fact, CUs might differ not only in the type of business they are
undertaking, but they could also have access to different financial resources, changing the way they are
building their business and thus also the services they expect to find inside a CS. Therefore, it would
be interesting to set up a survey of CUs, and to match the results to those from the survey of CBs.
The alleged presence of a “coworking bubble” and the fact that CBs were found to be often
unprofitable [54] or to rely on public subsidies [50], suggests a move away from the emphasis
on the creative class acting as an “urban panacea” for urban regeneration and competitiveness.
Instead, we shed light on the role of the “coworking entrepreneur”, whose choices create the operational
conditions for the economic viability of CBs and the attractiveness of CSs, consequently producing some
positive urban effects. In fact, coworking can produce a positive effect on the urban environment and
for the people involved only if they become more stable forms of work organization in the city, lasting
in time and surviving as business activities capable of interacting with the socio-economic urban fabric.
At a broader scale, the emerging forms of sharing activities and collaborative workplaces are leading
to a “spatial reconfiguration of jobs in cities” [58], creating new networks of microbusinesses that
are replacing the traditional industrial clusters and in which coworking spaces are acting as physical
platforms [18]. It is also changing “the way cities generate jobs through entrepreneurship” [59], and in
this sense the “coworking entrepreneur” should be regarded as an urban innovator, whose choices are
capable of producing urban concentrations of creative activity and consequently shape the urban and
socio-economic fabric of our cities.
Author Contributions: G.D. and M.T. contributed to the design and implementation of the research, to the analysis
of the results, and to the writing of the manuscript. G.D. contributed to the production of maps and figures.
Funding: This research was funded in the frame of the European Social Fund 2014–2020 Programme: Programma
Operativo Regionale della Regione Veneto—Fondo Sociale Europeo 2014–2020—Obiettivo generale “Investimenti
in favore della crescita e l’Occupazione—Reg. 1304/2013—Asse “Occupabilità”—DGR n. 2121 del 30/12/2015.
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 83
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org/contribution/coworking-city (accessed on 3 July 2018).
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48. Capdevila, I. Co-working spaces and the localised dynamics of innovation in Barcelona. Int. J. Innov. Manag.
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Algarve, Portugal, 13–16 September 2016.
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coworking-spaces-the-regeneration-aec0bbe40eae (accessed on 29 June 2018).
54. Foertsch, C. How Profitable Are Coworking Spaces? Available online: http://www.deskmag.com/en/how-
profitable-are-coworking-spaces-177 (accessed on 1 June 2018).
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7 July 2018).
49
Article
Coworking Spaces and New Social Relations: A Focus
on the Social Streets in Italy
Mina Akhavan * , Ilaria Mariotti, Lisa Astolfi and Annapaola Canevari
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies—Politecnico di Milano, Milan 2013, Italy;
ilaria.mariotti@polimi.it (I.M.); lisa.astolfi@mail.polimi.it (L.A.); annapaola.canevari@polimi.it (A.C.)
* Correspondence: mina.akhavan@polimi.it; Tel.: +39-022-399-3928
Received: 11 October 2018; Accepted: 10 December 2018; Published: 24 December 2018
Abstract: The late 2000s witnessed a wide diffusion of innovative workplaces, named coworking
spaces, designed to host creative people and entrepreneurs: the coworkers. Sharing the same
space may provide a collaborative community to those kinds of workers who otherwise would not
enjoy the relational component associated with a traditional corporate office. Coworking spaces
can bring several benefits to freelancers and independent workers, such as knowledge transfer,
informal exchange, cooperation, and forms of horizontal interaction with others, as well as business
opportunities. Moreover, additional effects may concern the urban context: from community building,
with the subsequent creation of social streets, and the improvement of the surrounding public space,
to a wider urban revitalization, both from an economic and spatial point of view. These “indirect”
effects are neglected by the literature, which mainly focuses on the positive impact on the workers’
performance. The present paper aimed to fill the gap in the literature by exploring the effects of
coworking spaces in Italy on the local context, devoting particular attention to the relation with social
streets. To reach this goal, the answers (236) to an on-line questionnaire addressed to coworkers
were analysed. The results showed that three quarters of the coworkers reported a positive impact of
coworking on the urban and local context, where 10 out of 100 coworking spaces developed and/or
participated in social streets located in Italian cities, but also in the suburban and peripheral areas.
Keywords: coworking spaces; social street; social relations; local communities
1. Introduction
In the context of a rising sharing economy and the growing knowledge of workers, the last two
decades have witnessed the worldwide spread of the phenomenon of new workplaces known as
“coworking spaces” (hereinafter CSs) [1]. One of the main strengths of CSs is they build a sense of
community amongst the people working there (Coworkers-CWs), which may enable them to benefit
from knowledge transfer, informal exchange, cooperation, and forms of horizontal interaction with
others, as well as business opportunities [2–7]. Some studied have discussed the urban effects of CSs,
including: (i) the improvement of the surrounding public space; (ii) the wider urban revitalization
(from an economic and a spatial point of view); (iii) community building, with the subsequent creation
of social streets (hereinafter SoSts) [8].
First founded in Italy, the concept of SoSts is a bottom-up approach to create communities at the
neighbourhood level with the aim of shifting from online virtual meetings (on Facebook) to offline
face to face gatherings in public spaces (such as the streets). Recently, CSs have shown interest in
collaborating with such informal organizations to tackle social isolation and to create communities
between coworkers and the residents living in the same neighbourhood.
Though the first CS was introduced in 2005, it is only in the past few years that we have seen
a growing interest amongst scholars of varied disciplines to study and explore this concept as an

Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 2
alternative workplace, with respect to the traditional office space (see the Section 2.1). The term
coworking was used more frequently before, often in contributions concerning business trends
(Botsman & Rogers, 2011; Ferriss, 2009; Hunt, 2009). Regarding the SoSt, created in 2013; apart from
some surveys that track the spread of these communities in Italy, no particular study has conducted
a structured study to explore the importance and effects of the SoSt at a local urban scale. Both the
phenomena of the CSs and SoSt are still nascent and need exploration through more in-depth studies
that focus on relevant case-studies.
Within this framework, the present paper aims to contribute to the emergent literature on CSs
and to fill the gap on the topic of collaboration between such workplaces with community-making
organizations such as the SoSt. In particular, this study explores the local urban effects of CSs in Italy,
with a particular focus on their interactions with the SoSts in Milan. Accordingly, to reach this goal,
the results of the qualitative and quantitative research is described. On the one hand, data on CSs in
Italy comes from the FARB research project—exploring the new workplaces, coworking spaces and
makerspaces, in Italy—which has developed:
- an original georeferenced database on all CSs in Italy, with detailed information concerning the
office spaces, provided services, etc.
- an on-line questionnaire to coworkers, with 236 responses.
Data on the SoSts, on the other hand, was mainly collected through desk research and on-site
field data for specific cases in Milan.
The effects of CSs at the local level may include: (i) the extension of daily and weekly cycles
of use (i.e., evening and night activities, weekend activities); (ii) the episodic participation in
strengthening community ties (i.e., SoSts); (iii) the revitalization of existing retail and commercial
activities; and (iv) the strengthening mini-clusters of creative and cultural productions [8]. The results
of the empirical analysis showed that three quarters of the CWs reported a positive impact of the CS
on the urban and local context, where 10 out of 100 CSs developed and or collaborated with SoSts
streets located in several Italian cities, as well as in urban, suburban, or peripheral areas.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 outlines the origins and main
aspects of the two phenomena: CS and SoSt. The empirical insights on CSs in Italy, and on the
relationship between the SoSt in the Lambrate neighbourhood (Milan) are presented in Section 3.
The conclusion (Section 4) summarizes the findings, whilst introducing future lines of research.
2. Literature Review
2.1. New Forms of Workplace: The Rise of Coworking Spaces

Technological advancements and information and communication technologies (ICTs) have led
to opportunities for changing the forms and nature of work, i.e., how, when, and where to perform
various work activities [9]. Therefore, many individuals tend to work remotely as independent or
freelance workers to make use of the autonomy and flexibility in space and time [10]. However, as
shown in some studies, such workers may experience the feeling of isolation [11,12]. The knowledge
economy is based on a highly skilled labour force and knowledge workers, and it has led to the rise of a
creative class (Florida, 2002), which is drawn to the opportunities and amenities found in urban centres,
and the demand for more collaborative and decentralized working trends [2]. These are some of the
reasons that have given rise to the need for new forms of workplaces, such as coworking spaces, which
are equipped with the necessary technological infrastructures, the ICTs, that favour high flexibility and
hybridization, where people can work outside regular traditional office working hours. In this regard,
some scholars argue that the borders between private homes, productive spaces, and socializing sites
are becoming less evident [13,14].
Here, it is worth underlining the difference between such new emerging workplaces and the
phenomenon of ‘third places,’ introduced by the sociologist Oldenburg [15], as informal social meeting
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Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 2
places that are separate from the two conventional environments of the home (the first place) and
the productive workspace/office (the second place). He argues that third places, such as community
centres, cafes, bars, malls, libraries, parks, etc., are anchors of communities that may facilitate and
foster broader, more creative interaction; hence, they are important for societies, public involvement,
and the creation of a sense of place. In this regard, Martins [16] (p. 142) also adds that “The coffee shop,
the pub or the park are more than spaces for pursuing creative lifestyles; they are part of a complex
network of spaces that are used, and essential, for digital production”. Others have asserted that such
public spaces, which are not planned as official working environments, are increasingly being occupied
as spaces for work [17].
Some scholars position new types of workplaces, such as CSs, within the wider collection of ‘third
spaces for work, learning and play’, which may facilitate formal productive activities within informal
social interactions, often accompanied with direct/indirect learning programmes and the use of
new technologies [18]. Unlike traditional third places such as libraries and bars, CSs are designed
and planned specifically as facilitators for work by providing the basic necessities such as desk,
technological needs (namely wifi), meeting rooms, and other equipment in order to develop their own
network. CSs, therefore, offer geographical proximity and non-hierarchical relationships, which may
create socialization and, consequently, business opportunities [2].
Since the birth of CSs in 2005, in the US, such sharing workplaces have spread worldwide over the
last decade, and the coworking movement is reported to have roughly doubled in size each year since
2006 (Figure 1). In the growing literature on CSs, it is stressed the role of coworking in establishing
a community; ensuring a quality of working behaviour as ‘working-alone-together’, which involves a
shared working environment and independent working activities [2,19–21].
Figure 1. The number of CSs and their members (coworkers) worldwide (2011–2017). Source: own
elaboration based on data from: 2017 Global CoWorking Survey, www.deskmag.com.
In the more recent literature, CSs are regarded as potential “serendipity accelerators” [3] (p. 8)
designed to host knowledge workers, the creative class, and entrepreneurs, who endeavour to break
isolation and to find a convivial environment that may favour meeting and collaboration [3]. Besides,
CSs is considered as a “phenomenon that happens in shared, collaborative workspaces in which the
emphasis is on community, relationship, productivity and creativity” [22] (p. 4). In other words, it
provides localized spaces where independent professionals work while sharing resources and their
knowledge with the rest of the community [23].
Furthermore, as mentioned beforehand, trends such as the rise of the digital economy,
advancements in information and communication technologies, growth in entrepreneurship, freelance
and teleworkers demands new workplaces and collaborative coworking culture, which enables the
formation of an economy that may support community and innovation [24]. In this regard, Merkel [25]
(p. 122) underlines that “as flexibly rentable, cost-effective and community-oriented workplaces,
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coworking spaces facilitate encounters, interaction and a fruitful exchange between diverse work,
practice, and epistemic communities and cultures”. Nevertheless, studies have also argued the fact
that simple physical proximity of coworkers may not necessarily promote interaction and collaboration
towards a sense of community [26], yet instead other factors such as social animation, engagement and
enrolment among coworkers are seen essential [6]. Others have also confirmed the importance of CSs
to embark upon collaborative activities in order to ensure highly productive working environment,
considering the opportunities made available by these spaces, such as social interaction, networking
and knowledge sharing [27].
Some scholars in the field of urban studies have made an attempt to investigate the location
patterns and effects of CSs on the urban environment [8]. Findings of their empirical study on 68 CSs
located in Milan shows that their location patterns resemble the service industries in urban areas,
and mainly the so-called ‘creative clusters’. Moreover, this research sheds light on some of the urban
effects of CSs, such as the participation of CWs to local initiatives, contribution to urban revitalization
trends, and the micro-scale physical transformations. Regarding the potential impact of CSs on the
local urban context, a very recent publication on mid-sized cities in Ontario [28] has shed light on
the importance of innovative, collaborative and inclusive approaches of such workplaces to local
economic development; since they provide affordable, well-resourced spaces for new organizations
and businesses, yet also for freelance workers and local entrepreneurs.
Although the academic literature on CSs is expanding, further research and more detailed studies
are still needed to explore the dynamics of CSs at the local level, and more specifically to understand
their interaction and role in neighbourhood communities. This paper, hence, aims to fill the gap in the
literature by focusing on these aspects concerning the insertion of CSs within the new made-in-Italy
phenomenon: Social Streets, which is explored in the following sections.
2.2. From A Facebook Group to a Neighbourhood Community: The Phenomenon of Social Streets
Gaspar and Glaeser [29] argue two opposing effects of improvements in telecommunications
technology on face-to face interactions: they may decrease and become electronically (via social
network services for instance), or in contrary the contacts may increase thanks to the technology. So,
it is true that people tend to interact more virtually and electronically and may need physical places
to meet. SoSts are, therefore, a new and innovative answer that goes exactly in this direction: “tame
places, make them familiar” (Marc Augé’s preface for the report on SoSts in Milan:"Vicini e connessi" [30]).
A SoSt is born from the desire of the residents of an anti-social street to seek and create participatory
and collective-meeting points in their neighbourhood, i.e., places to meet and to know each other; to
do things together and help one another.
In cities, people have always needed places to meet one another and to be able to recognize urban
elements, such as squares, public places, parks, and roads. Yet, cities, often, end up in creating ghetto
neighbourhoods (gated communities) where cars dominate; people are isolated in their apartments
and public spaces are increasingly hostile and unused. In recent years, however, a new kind of public
space, called the SoSt, was created from the bottom, by the residents themselves [31].
One can consider the SoSt as “new places”, where the point of reference is the public space, here
is the street and the spaces around it. Unknown people who live on an anonymous street begin to get
to know and meet one another; collaborate to transform the neighbourhood into a social place that is
rich in relationships. Social networks are the perfect platform to trigger these ties between unknown
neighbours. Therefore, people may become familiar with others easily through overcoming the initial
threshold of the face-to-face encounter with strangers; online knowledge and collaboration quickly
transforms into a real community that lives and regenerates the neighbourhood.
The idea of “Social Street” in Italy originates from the experience of the Facebook group
“Residents in Via Fondazza-Bologna”, born, in September 2013, from the observation of the
general impoverishment of social relationships, which causes feelings of loneliness and loss of
sense of belonging; urban degradation and lack of social control of the territory (See the website
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Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 2
www.socialstreet.it). As a form of neighbourhood community, the SoSt aspires to promote good

neighbourly practices; to socialize with the neighbours on their own way, and to establish links, share
needs, exchange skills and knowledge; to carry out projects of common interest and gain all the
benefits that derive from greater social interaction. SoSt may, therefore, allow people to socialize and to
motivate virtuous circles of reciprocity and trust. The requisites to consider a SoSt is different, would
be the spatial proximity [32]: the SoSt are served to spatially connect people, in limited portions of the
district (the street or the neighbourhood); other main features are: social innovation, social inclusion
and groundless.
The definition of SoSt is unique, but its characteristics may vary by: the number of participants,
size of the neighbourhood, and the people’s level of participation and commitment to the group.
The first phase of launching a SoSt entails creating a neighbourhood based group on Facebook. This is
the first step in which people may get in touch on the digital platform, asking for information and help
from their online neighbours. The second step is the offline meeting, in which the neighbours decide
to socialize even outside the virtual group page, to build links that are defined as “real”. In the third
phase (defined as “virtuous”), they can move from simple knowledge seeking to a real collaboration
with common interests or utilities. In this phase, the neighbours collaborate for the sake of their area’s
common goods; for instance, arrangement of uncultivated flowerbeds, interventions on degraded
areas or small redevelopment actions, etc.
The idea of the term “social street” was coined by the founder, joining the two key concepts: social
network and place of real socialization (the street). The transition from the group of via Fondazza to
the birth and diffusion of SoSts has necessitated the creation of a website to communicate, collect and
disseminate experiences and good practices of the SoSt (see http://www.socialstreet.it/).
3. Empirical Insights
3.1. Exploring Coworking Spaces in Italy

Within the FARB research project (entitled “New working spaces. Promises of innovations, effects
on the economic and urban context”, which has been funded by Department of Architecture and
Urban Studies (DAStU)—Politecnico di Milano) exploring new workplaces—coworking spaces and
makers spaces—in Italy, the CSs located in Italy have been identified and mapped: total number of
549 CSs are recorded, of which about 51% are located in the Italian metropolitan cities, with Milan (97),
Rome (46), Turin (18), and Florence (16) hosting about half of them (Figure 2).
Figure 2. The location of CS in Italy at the beginning of 2018. Source [7].
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Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 2
Besides, an on-line questionnaire has been sent to the coworkers (via the coworking managers).
By July 2017, 236 coworkers have answered, from 137 CSs located in 19 Italian cities: 44% female and
56% male; 52% belong to the age group 36–50, followed by coworkers aged between 25 to 35 (38%),
over 51 (9%), and those between aged 19–24 (1%).
As mentioned beforehand, the city of Milan hosts the majority of CS (97), which are agglomerated
into five areas (Figure 3). The main location determinants of CS in urban areas, as already discussed by
Mariotti et al. [8]:
(1) the high density of business activities, which is a proxy for urbanization and localization
economies, as well as market size;
(2) the proximity to universities and research centres, which is a proxy for the availability of skilled
labour force and business opportunities;
(3) the presence of a good local public transport network, which is a proxy for the level of accessibility.
Figure 3. The agglomeration of CS in Milan. Source [8] (p. 10).
3.2. The Growing Number of Social Streets in Italy

From the studies, it was estimated that in the last quarter of 2013, just after the launch of the first
SoSt, the total number rose to 140, and then up to 454 in January 2017 [30]. From the studies carried
out by the SoSt observatory, the largest number is located in North-West 143 (34%) and North-East 133
(32%), we find 78 (19%) in the Centre, 36 (8%) in the South and Islands 30 (7%) [30]. Currently, in Italy
there are a total number of 100,000 SoSt members (streeters), of which about 50% are residing in Milan.
This phenomenon is also emerging outside national borders: in January 2018 the SoSt observatory
surveyed SoSts in Warsaw, Trondheim, Nelson Glenduan, Madison, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Montreal
and Agudos [30]. In some cases, the SoSts were established from people visiting Italy who participated
in one of them and then repeated this experience in their country.
The difference in numbers between the North and South can be associated with the technological
development, and social innovation propensity in the northern areas. Regarding the number of SoSt,
Lombardy leads with 112, immediately followed by Emilia Romagna with 100, then Lazio with 47
(Figure 4). Certainly because these are the regions that host the most important cities; in fact in Milan
there are 77 SoSt, followed by Bologna with 67 and Rome with 34.
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Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 2
ϭϮϬ
ϭϬϬ
ϴϬ
ϲϬ
ϰϬ
ϮϬ
Figure 4. The location of Social Streets in the Italian provinces. Source: authors’ elaboration from the
reference [30].
Between January 2017 and January 2018, some cities have experienced a positive trend (Milan,
Bologna and Rome), others have remained stable, while some have even closed their SoSt. Milan
remains in the lead also for the number of followers in the Facebook page, about 50,000; once again
followed by Bologna with 13,000 members. Yet, not always the number of SoSt corresponds to the
number of streeters. For example, Novara and Brescia both have two SoSts, but the first has 5 members,
while the second has almost 1000.
Milan is the capital of northern Italy, and the financial and economic core of the country. Many
people have chosen to settle in this city, and among them there are people who do not appreciate the
coldness of social relationships. But if you get to know your neighbours, and you could rely on them
for little or important things, this could also improve your quality of life.
Milan is, hence, the right city for the expansion of this phenomenon, as it has always been
characterized by innovation, creativity and development [33]. Through the expansion of the
phenomenon, in the city there has been a growth boom in 2014, with the opening of 39 SoSt. As for
other cities of the province, there are a total number of 10 SoSt. Indeed the numbers are significantly
lower than Milan, but still significant.
In January 2018, 1760 members are registered in the SoSt groups, and some of them have confirmed
as points of reference for the district, while we must remember that not all of them are active in the
same way; not all are active both online and offline; senior citizens are not always the most active
while count as the highest number of subscribers to Facebook groups.
Among the social networks in Milan, the one with the highest number of people registered is “San
Gottardo-Meda-Montegani” with 7550 members, followed by Nolo Social District which, despite being
the youngest, already has 5579 members. The spatial distribution within the city is not homogeneous:
the SoSt have no administrative boundaries, they are fluid groups that by definition connect the
neighbours of a street and their surroundings and are linked to the more social characteristics of some
areas rather than others; such as the presence of parks or meeting places (namely Darsena, Navigli
and Duomo).
3.3. The Effects of CSs on the Local Context and Collaboration with SoSts
As concerns the effects of CS on the urban environment and the neighbourhood, the answers of
the 236 coworkers emphasise the agreements with local services as the most significant impact on
the surrounding neighbourhoods, which can contribute, directly or indirectly to a degree of urban
regeneration (see also [34]). Moreover, other activities which may show a potential higher impact
on the neighbourhood are: organizing charity events, participating at a SoSt and belonging to an
Ethical Purchasing Group (Gruppo di Acquisto Solidale—GAS) (Figure 5). These activities reveal the
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Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 2
importance of CS as social and cultural hubs, in some cases with specific welfare-related activities such
as childcare [33].
Figure 5. Activities OFFERED by the CSs. Source: [33].
3.4. The Case of “Lambrate-Milano-Social Street”

Out of a total number of 97 CSs in Milan, 19 are located in areas of SoSt that give rise to initiatives
of different types within the district (other than to their coworkers). An example is provided by the
case of Lambrate Social Street in Milan, which will be discussed in the next section.
In the last twenty years, the Lambrate neighbourhood, located in the Eastern part of the city, has
experienced an urban regeneration process partly driven by: design, art, new spaces for work (such as
CSs) open air at the markets, music and the desire of its inhabitants to live in a “new” neighbourhood.
Since 2010, Lambrate hosts events of the Fuorisalone related to the Salone del Mobile (Milan Design
Week). In recent years, a virtuous collaboration between coworkers, inhabitants and entrepreneurs of
the district has been consolidated, which is progressively leading the area towards a process of urban
regeneration “from below”.
In 2015, with a few members on the Facebook page (all being neighbours), the SoSt Residents
in Lambrate—Milan was formed. It has grown exponentially over the years, especially at the first
auto events organized in Piazza Rimembranze, the main square of the district, a roundabout that was
poorly used as a parking space and surrounded by car traffic. The benches were often occupied by
families of nomads and homeless people, being deserted by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood
as an unsafe place. The square’s liveability issues was strongly felt by the residents; one of the main
demands that emerged during the first meeting was, indeed, that of giving back life to the square.
Therefore, the idea of creating a shared garden was born, with the help of many residents who
came on a Saturday morning in the square with plants, flowers, boxes, brooms and black bags to
clean up. The children painted the boxes, prepared and spread seeds bombs. With the help of some
creative designers and architects in Lambrate, the neighbours have built a beautiful garden in the
square. Within a few months, the shared garden has become an important place for evening aperitives,
to get to gather and communicate with one another.
These series of events has given a lot of visibility to the SoSt, the number of members has surged.
Even other associations in the area have contacted them to make a network. Today the ViviLambrate
Group—which was founded in October 2014 in a spontaneous and self-organized form, by a set of
organizations and associations based in the Municipality 3, networked with the aim of promoting
cultural and social initiatives to revitalize the Lambrate district—is active; it groups together various
associations in the area, including the SoSt, and organizes once a month the Saturday of Lambrate,
with activities and initiatives to repopulate and revive the square. The SoSt has also participated in
several Saturdays of Lambrate with the counter of used clothes, a very successful initiative and high
level of participation.
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Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 2
The Group promotes the redevelopment of the public and private spaces of the area, from the
historical districts, up to the former industrial zones that constitute a great heritage yet little appreciated
not only by the Lambrate citizens, but also by the Milanese. ViviLambrate’s approach is to activate
the human, creative and productive resources of the district and to promote citizen participation, in
collaboration with the Municipality 3 and the support of the Institutions.
ViviLambrate is formed by 11 different organizations, which aggregates several thousand citizens
of the area, yet also firms and private social actors active in different cultural, artistic and social fields,
informal groups of citizens, start-ups, CSs, galleries of art and freelancers. From this network of
experiences and the voluntary work of many citizens, the initiatives “There is life in the square! and
“The Saturdays of Lambrate”, enlivens the streets of the neighbourhood every month, with particular
attention to the elderly and children, and strong creative and supportive spirit.
These have undoubtedly generated interest and convinced architects and creative designers to
settle even temporarily in the district using the existing coworking spaces. As mentioned beforehand,
this is establishing a virtuous collaboration between coworkers, inhabitants and traders of the district
that is progressively taking the area to a real urban regeneration “from below” (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Activities offered by the CSs. Source: Lisa Astolfi (co-author).
4. Conclusions
While places and modes of work are becoming increasingly collective and collaborative, citizens
(residents and city users) increasingly express the need for new social spaces and places to recognize
themselves: places to tame and make familiar. In the parts of the city in which these two phenomena occur
simultaneously, spontaneous processes of shared urban regeneration, from below, can be triggered.
This process, apparently longer and more tiring than a project with a top-down approach, offers higher
guarantees of success over time as it directly involves all the social and economic forces (without
discrimination) of the interested area in all of its phases of conception and realization.
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Both the two phenomena of CSs and SoSts are served as important ‘third places’ [15]; the former
being an alternative workplace and the latter a place for social gathering where broader, more creative
interaction in a free non-privatized environment is encouraged. With the main aim to understand the
interaction between these coworkers and streeters, the present paper has discussed the first outcomes
of a research study on the relationship between new workplaces, such as CSs, and SoSts. As stated
previously, in Milan 19 CSs out of 97 are located in areas of SoSts and this gives rise to initiatives located
in the district (other than to their coworkers) of which the presented case of Lambrate-Milano-Social
Street is just one example of a much wider phenomenon.
The paper has, therefore, put in evidence how the new workplaces, which emphasise the sense of
community, can foster the development of collaboration with SoSts and subsequently contribute to the
improvement of urban spaces and eventually urban regeneration. Therefore, tailored policies may be
designed to foster the growth of CSs, especially considering depressed areas.
Author Contributions: All four authors have equally contributed to the design and implementation of the research.
More specifically, the introduction, Sections 2, 3.1 and 3.3 have been written by I.M. and M.A.; Sections 3.2, 3.4
and 4 have been mostly developed and written by L.A. and A.C.
Funding: The project has been funded by FARB (2016) research project “New working spaces. Promises of
innovations, effects on the economic and urban context” at Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
(DAStU)—Politecnico di Milano, Coordinator: Ilaria Mariotti; Mina Akhavan was part of the research team.
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60
Article
A Framework for Assessing Democratic Qualities in
Collaborative Economy Platforms: Analysis of
10 Cases in Barcelona
Mayo Fuster Morell 1 and Ricard Espelt 2, * ID
1 Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA;
mayo.fuster@eui.eu
2 Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Open University of Catalonia, 08289 Barcelona, Spain
* Correspondence: ricardespelt@uoc.edu; Tel.: +34-667-515-503
Received: 2 June 2018; Accepted: 21 July 2018; Published: 25 July 2018
Abstract: The term “collaborative economy” or “collaborative economy platforms” refers to exchange,
sharing, and collaboration in the consumption and production of capital and labor among distributed
groups, supported by a digital platform. Collaborative economies’ use is growing rapidly and
exponentially, creating high expectations of sustainability and their potential to contribute to
the democratization of the economy. However, collaborative economy platforms lack a holistic
framework to assess their sustainability and pro-democratization qualities. In addition, there is
confusion about platforms which present themselves as collaborative when they actually are not, and
similar uncertainties and ambiguities are associated with diverse models. To address this confusion,
this article provides a framework for assessing the pro-democratic qualities of collaborative economy
initiatives. It was applied to 10 cases in the context of the city of Barcelona. The methods used in
this study include mapping and typifying 10 collaborative economy cases in the city, structured and
in-depth interviews, and a co-creation session. The results indicate the presence of several modalities
for favoring democratic values in a collaborative economy.
Keywords: collaborative economy; platform cooperativism; democratic quality
1. Introduction
The term “collaborative economy” or “collaborative economy platforms” refers to exchange,
sharing, and collaboration in the consumption and production of capital and labor among distributed
groups, supported by a digital platform. The use of collaborative economies is growing rapidly
and exponentially, bringing high expectations of sustainability for its potential to contribute to the
democratization of the economy. However, collaborative economy platforms lack a holistic framework
for assessing these sustainability and pro-democratization qualities. In addition, there is confusion
about platforms that present themselves as collaborative when they actually are not, and similar
uncertainties and ambiguities are associated with diverse models [1].
The disruptive impact of the best-known economy platform model, that of extractionist “unicorn”
corporation (a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion) platforms such as Uber and
Airbnb, has provoked huge controversy [2]. Successful “alternative” and truly collaborative models
exist, such as open commons, platform cooperativism, and decentralized organizations based on social
economy and open knowledge, but these have received limited research attention.
First, this article reviews collaborative economy conceptualization and previous attempts to
classify collaborative economies to provide a framework of pro-democratic qualities. Then, we apply
the resulting methodology in 10 relevant cases located in the city of Barcelona. At that time, we show
the results and, finally, present the conclusions and discussion.

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 61
1.1. Collaborative Economy

The term collaborative economy or collaborative platforms economy (which can only be
considered collaborative and commons-oriented under a particular set of conditions) refers to
the exchange (matching supply and demand), sharing and collaborating in the consumption, and
production of capital and labor among distributed groups supported by a digital platform [3]. It is
growing rapidly and exponentially, and has become a top priority for governments around the globe
(i.e., European Commission, 2016 [4]). However, the collaborative economy suffers from important
challenges. We would like to highlight and address two of them: (1) The platform collaborative
economy is creating high sustainability expectations for its potential to contribute to a sustainable
development of society [5–9], and for its potential to contribute to the democratization of economy [10].
However, the platform collaborative economy lacks a holistic framework to assess these sustainability
and pro-democratization qualities. Furthermore, the sustainable design of platform has considered
questions of technological and economic aspects, but has not integrated other sustainability relevant
questions, such as the environmental impact, gender and inclusion, or its policy implications, lacking
a proper multidisciplinary perspective of the platform economy; (2) There is a confusion about
the platforms which present themselves as collaborative while actually they are not, and similar
uncertainties and ambiguities are associated with diverse models. The disruptive impact of the best
known platform economy model, that of Unicorn extractionist corporation platforms such as Uber and
Airbnb, is provoking huge controversy [2]. Successful “alternative” and truly collaborative models
exist, such as open commons, platform cooperativism and decentralized organizations based on a
social economy and open knowledge, with examples such as Fairmondo. Nonetheless, these have
received neither policy nor research attention. Additionally, there is a lack of a classification system
that helps to establish the difference.
1.2. Previous Attempts to Classify Models of Collaborative Economy

There have been previous attempts to classify collaborative economies. The Spanish Association
of the Digital Economy (Adigital) carried out a study, “Collaborative models are on demand in
digital platforms” [11], to distinguish among the activities of: (1) Collaborative Economy: a digital
platform serving as an intermediary between equals, either between organizations or individuals,
with or without economic consideration; (2) Economy on Demand: a digital platform serving as an
intermediary between a professional and a user; and (3) Service Economy: a digital platform that,
without disintermediation, connects users with goods for their temporary use, adapting to the effective
use time required by users and making the spatial location more flexible.
If we focus on the first group, we see that it includes projects with such highly disparate approaches
as AirBnB (a vacation rental platform owned by a multinational) and Goteo (a crowdfunding platform
based on commons principles owned by a foundation). In fact, the interface or platform design both
conditions and predefines the social relations—related, for example, to interaction mechanisms, regulation,
profile information, or promotion—among users [12,13].
Netnographic investigation of 55 collaborative consumption platforms in The Triple Impact
Assessment of P2P Collaborative Consumption in Europe project [14] defined three types of collaborative
consumption platforms: (1) Network Oriented Platforms (e.g., Airbnb, Blablacar, TimeRepublick,
or Eatwith), where users have many forms of communication in order to get digital reputation and
show confidence to engage other users; (2) Transaction Oriented Platforms (Vibbo or Nolotiro), with
fewer communication and interaction tools, focused on convenience and more connected to the traditional
consumer and provider roles; and (3) Community Oriented Platforms (WWOPP voluntaries network,
La Colmena que dice sí or CiroSel), linked to a social or environmental mission and to a strong code of
conduct. These platforms develop some collective rules beyond self-management regulation based on
the capacity of the individuals to manage their confidence networks. Gordo et al. [15] determined the
relevance of the transformation of the consumer into an entrepreneur or the new role of prosumer. In the
end, in some platforms, users provide knowledge, properties, or services while intermediaries are those
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 61
who really earn money [8]. At the same time, netnographic research highlights the necessity to precisely
review how each platform initiative works and the platform’s social, economic, and environmental
impacts [15,16].
In this context, where a critical and holistic review of digital platforms that promote the
collaborative economy is required, a new key concept emerges: “platform cooperativism”. According
to Scholz [17], a digital platform must be based on collective ownership, decent payment and security
of income for its workers, the transparency and portability of the data created, appreciation and
recognition of the value generated by the platform’s activity, collective decision-making, a protective
legal framework, transferable protection of workers and the coverage of social benefits, protection
against arbitrary conduct in the rating system, rejection of excessive supervision in the workplace,
and, finally, the right of the workers to disconnect. As stated by Scholz, on the one hand, the platforms
must be shaped around the values of cooperativism. On the other hand, digital tools must amplify the
scalability and the social and economic impact of cooperative organizations. At the same time,
Fuster Morell [10] indicated that the very construction of technology platforms is not a minor
issue, and that cooperative platforms should adopt open software and licenses. In short, creating a
self-managed governance that allows the articulation of community development around the digital
commons [18] has to be approached as “open cooperativism” [19], an antithesis of the unicorn and
corporate platforms.
There have been previous attempts to establish delimitations in collaborative production or
commons-based peer production (CBPP) [20]. This is the case of the four freedoms of free software.
The four freedoms are used in relation to whether a particular software program qualifies as “free”
software. A program is free software if it adequately gives users all four freedoms. Although the four
freedoms for software might resemble what we are trying to do here, CB relates to a collective process
and delimitation criteria for the features of that process. By contrast, the definition of free software
is individualistically driven and built based on individual freedoms, not the features of the process
as a whole.
From our point of view, it is necessary to consider the complexity of the classification
of collaborative economy platforms, and specific analyses are required to distinguish models.
For example, during the last three years, a new type of agrofood consumer platform was spreading
its activity in Barcelona: La Colmena que dice sí. Despite using an approach similar to that of
cooperatives to engage potential members (disintermediation between local producers and consumers),
the organization’s values were far from the values of social and economic solidarity [21]. Departing
from this reflection, in this paper, we provide a framework to characterize models of collaborative
economy and visualize their qualities.
In this article, we propose a framework for the democratic qualities of collaborative economy
platforms. The framework considers the dimensions of governance design, economical strategy,
technological base, knowledge policies, and social responsibility regarding externalization impact of the
platforms. The democratic balance is an analytical tool that helps to visualize the democratic qualities
of collaborative economy initiatives, differentiate models, provide insight into the sustainability of
their design, and inform technological development (see Figure 1).
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Figure 1. Procommons collaborative economy analytical star framework.
1.3. A Framework of Democratic Qualities of Collaborative Economy Platforms

The democratic qualities of the collaborative economy are articulated around three main
dimensions, with in six subdivisions:
1. Governance and Economic: We believe that these two sub-dimensions are interconnected. Thus,
the way that the project or platform is governed is connected to the underlying economic model.
1.a. Governance: This aspect regards democratic enterprises and involving the community
generated value in the platform governance. This aspect also regards the decision-making model of
the organization, and mechanisms and political rules of participation in the digital platform.
1.b. Economic model: This aspect regards whether the project’s financing model is based on
private capital, ethical finance, or a distributed fund (crowdfunding or match-funding), the business
models, mechanisms of economic transparency, how far profitability is driven in the whole plan,
distribution of value generated, and equity payment and labor rights. This aspect regards ensuring
equitable and timely remuneration, and access to benefits and rights for workers (maximization of
income, salary predictability, safe income, protection against arbitrary actions, rejection of excessive
vigilance at the workplace, and the right to disconnect).
2. Knowledge and Technological policies: In the same sense, knowledge and technological policies
are interconnected. Thus, the adoption of certain technological tools or licenses is going to impact the
way the platform promotes knowledge.
2.a. Knowledge policy: Regards the property type, as established by the license used (free licenses
or proprietary licenses) for the content and knowledge generated, type of data (open or not), the ability
to download data (and in which formats), and the promotion of the transparency of algorithms,
programs, and data. This aspect regards privacy awareness, the protection of property including
personal data, and preventing abuse and the collection or sharing of data without consent. This aspect
also regards guaranteeing the portability of data and reputation.
2.b. Technological policy: This aspect regards the mode of property and freedom associated with
type of software used and its license (free or proprietary) and the model of technology architecture:
distributed (using blockchain, for example) or centralized (software as a service).
3. Social responsibility and impact. These dimensions relate to any source of awareness and
responsibility regarding the externalities and negative impacts, such as social exclusion and social
inequalities, the inclusion of gender, regarding the equal access to the platform of people with all kinds
of income and circumstances in an equitable and impartial way (without discrimination). This aspect
regards compliance with health and safety standards that protect the public, and the environmental
impact (promoting sustainable practices that reduce emissions and waste, taking into account the
rebound effect they can generate and the most efficient use of resources, the origin and production
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 61
conditions of the goods and services they offer, minimizing resource use, and recycling capacity), and
the impact in the policy arena, and the preservation of the right to the city of its inhabitants and the
common good of the city. This aspect also regards the protection of the general interest, public space,
and basic human rights such as access to housing.

The methodology, aimed at testing the application of the above six democratic qualities, was
based on an in-depth 10 case study comparison. Data collection was based on digital ethnography
(to collect indicators for the cases and get familiar with them), co-creation sessions with the cases,
and an interview with each of the cases. Data were collected in May 2017. Data analysis combined
qualitative and visual analysis of data from co-creation sessions and interviews.
2.1. Sample
The empirical work departs from a previous mapping of 1000 cases of Collaborative Economy
in Barcelona, based on the P2P Value directory on collaborative economy. From these resources,
we selected 10 based on the following criteria:
1. Projects with activity in Barcelona.

2. Projects based on collaborative production.
3. Projects with a significant level of activity, rather than in a very preliminary stage.
4. Projects with a social orientation, meaning closer to the cooperative platform than to the unicorn
platform scope.
5. We selected the cases to ensure diversity, and based on being significantly relevant.
The cases are El Recetario, SmartIB, Goteo, Katuma, Bdtonline, XOBB, FreeSound, Sentilo, eReuse,
and Pam a Pam. A description of each is provided in Section 3.
2.2. Indicators Criteria

For each dimension, we assessed two variables with three grades of accomplishment.
2.3. Analytical Methods

We performed a previous web observation to collect more information about the selected
platforms, a co-creation session (5 May 2017), and an interview of the 10 cases, following the case study
methodology [22]. Departing from our 10 cases chosen, we designed a co-creation session divided into
three steps with three main objectives. In the first part, the participants indicated their evolution in the
form of a graph, highlighted milestones, and projected their future evolution. In the second part, each
platform actively shared how their approach to each point of the commons star diagram (Figure 1:
economic model, social responsibility, knowledge and technological policy, and governance model).
Finally, all participants identified the challenges of a collaborative procommon economy in terms of
specific needs of the sector, technological demands, and public policy recommendations.
3. Results: Analytical Framework for the Democratic Qualities of 10 Cases of Collaborative

Economy in Barcelona
In this section, we present the analytical framework of the democratic qualities of collaborative
economy (Figure 1) applied to 10 cases that we analyzed based on each collaborative economy’s
performance of the star of commons qualities (El Recetario, SMart IB, Goteo, Katuma, Bdtonline,
FreeSound, XOBB, eReuse, Sentilo, and Pam a Pam). See Table 1 for a comparison of the cases on their
performance of each of the qualities.
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 61
Table 1. Indicators of procommons collaborative economy assessment.
Dimension Indicator Fulfillment Partial Fulfillment Unfulfillment

Democratic type of
Type of Procommon organization
governance (foundation, Private company
GOV organization (public administration)
association, cooperative)
Governance is based on Some participation tools are No participation
Open participation
open participation provided tools are provided
Goal Non-profit Middle profit Profit
ECON
Any member of organization Some economic information No economic
Transparency can access to the economic is accessible to the information is
information community provided
Free and
All tech tools are based on Some of tech tools are based No tech tool is
open-source
TECH FOSS on FOSS based on FOSS
software (FOSS)
Tech architecture is fully Tech architecture is partially Tech architecture is
Decentralized
decentralized decentralized centralized
All rights of
Part of the contents are open
Copyleft Content licenses are copyleft contents are
KNOWL access
reserved
No data are
Open data All data are downloadable Some data are downloadable
downloadable
Project has a relevant role in Project has some inclusion No policy or action
Inclusion
SOC inclusion policies about inclusion
Project has a relevant role in Project has some No policy or action
Green
environment environment policies about environment
3.1. The Democratic Qualities of 10 Cases of Collaborative Economies in Barcelona

Analysis of the cases regarding the commons balance follows.
3.1.1. El Recetario
A collaborative platform, created in 2007, focused on research, experimentation, and reuse of
waste for the construction of furniture and accessories, where the community of creators (700) share
what they do and how they do it (through recipes, 450), learning from it and collaborating with others.
• Governance: Voluntary open participation.

• Economic model: Participated in a Universidad Internacional de Andalucia (UNIA) match-funding
Goteo campaign (2015), which allows them to improve the project. However, a sustainable economic
model is not yet defined.
• Technological policy: The technological platform is developed in Wordpress and, despite being
planned, the whole platform code is not yet open.
• Knowledge policy: At the same time, the content is under a Creative Commons license (BY-SA. 4.0
copyleft license).
• Social responsibility: El Recetario is in the transition of becoming a consumer/producer
cooperative platform.
3.1.2. SMart IB
SMart is an abbreviation for the French phrase, “Societé Mutuelle pour Artististes”. SMart is a
non-profit organization that was launched in Belgium in 1994 under the name of SMartBe. Through the
ESempleo Program, founded by European sources and managed by CEPES Andalucía, SMartBe came
into contact in 2011 with a cooperative business group from Andalucía that brought together the social
cooperatives AURA ETT, ACTÚA SERVICIOS, and A2A Formación, among others. Finally, the new
Law 14/2011 of Andalusian Cooperative Societies introduced advanced societal models of social
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innovation, creating a legal environment in which SMart Ibérica could begin to operate in Spain in
May 2013. Currently, the Spanish cooperative receives the economic support of the Belgian cooperative.
The project has expanded well, with 3000 members in Spain and 800 in Catalonia.
• Governance: A governing board makes the decisions of the cooperative, and the users are invited
once or twice a year to hold an assembly.
• Governance: Voluntary open participation.
• Economic model: Each member pays a 150 € initial share capital contribution and 7.5% services
commission. With this capital, the organization pays members’ bills in advance.
• Technological policy: There is no technological platform running yet.
• Knowledge policy: The knowledge generated is not open.
• Social responsibility: The project promotes cultural and artistic activity.
3.1.3. Goteo
Goteo is a crowd/match-funding platform constituted as a foundation. The project started
through a collaborative founding investigation in 2010, and the first version of the platform launched
in 2011. Currently, Goteo has more than 90,000 users, raising 4 million Euros.
• Governance: As a foundation, the decision-making process is carried by a small group of people.
• Economic model: Users pay a 4% commission, but the promoters intend to arrive at 0%.
• Technological policy: Software is subject to a copyleft license (AGPL).
• Knowledge policy: Some platform data are freely downloadable.
• Social responsibility: In terms of social impact, all projects which participate in campaigns must
define the social responsibility of their actions.
3.1.4. Katuma
Katuma is an Agro-food consumption platform based on commons collaborative economy values.
The project was launched in 2017 and was developed by Coopdevs, a non-profit association focused
on free and open software to promote social and solidarity economy projects.
• Governance: A membership cooperative governance is planned.
• Economic model: The intention is to found the platform with membership fees.
• Technological policy: The platform is developed with open software.
• Knowledge policy: The contents are under a Creative Commons (BY NC) license.
• Social responsibility: The project focuses on connecting producers and consumers in terms of
social justice.
3.1.5. Bdtonline
Bdtonline is a platform of a time banking association, Associació pel Desenvolupament dels Bancs
del Temps (ADBdT), which uses TimeOverFlow software, also created by Coopdevs. The association
and software were developed and raised in 2012. Currently, 47 organizations use this platform
with 5800 users. One of the main goals of the organization is its usability independently of the
characterization of the organization.
• Governance: Annual assembly, they use Loomio groups as a framework of members’ participation.
• Economic model: All economic information is published on the website. The project is supported
by membership fees and a small number of monthly voluntary donations, which are not enough
to invest in improving the project, this being just the developer’s task.
• Technological policy: Public domain license.
• Knowledge policy: Wiki space under public domain license.
• Social responsibility: Large number of organizations and users.
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3.1.6. FreeSound
The project, started in 2005, is promoted by Pompeu Fabra University and has a research group
with the objective of gathering free content for educational purposes and research. It was a success,
winning prizes from the City Council (2005) and Google (2009). Currently, the platform, which is
hosted in a central server, has more than six million registered users and over 400,000 registered sounds.
• Governance: Open forum participation moderated by research members.

• Economic model: Growth has been deliberately slow to avoid any financial problems, which
could force it to close. The majority of limited economic sources are from research. Promoters are
studying new ways of funding based on different types of users or a Wikimedia donations model.
• Technological policy: Open source platform.
• Knowledge policy: Creative Commons license (CC BY) and data are open.
• Social responsibility: Most creators or producers use FreeSound to find sound sources.
3.1.7. XOBB
The project, constituted as a cooperative, is the result of matching two research groups from
different disciplines, sociology and technology, within Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB).
After the rejection of the national blind association, ONCE, the promoters, with the support of other
associations for the visually impaired, got resources from a Barcelona City Council grant to finance
the first prototype in Creu Coberta Street. Beacons allow blind people to find information about
establishments (e.g., products, offers, and open hours).
• Governance: Periodic assembly meeting.

• Economic model: Everybody could use it for free, but if somebody gets economic profit from the
network they must pay for it.
• Technological policy: The project, based on a replicable open digital infrastructure, is just starting.
• Knowledge policy: Open data.
• Social responsibility: The main objective of the project is based on inclusion.
3.1.8. eReuse
Computers today are just recycled, not reused. eReuse develops open-data and open-source tools
and services to reduce the costs of refurbishing and reusing computers. It was created in 2015 by
Pangea, an independent non-profit association, with 15 community organizations. eReuse launched a
tool to trace the origin of reused material and see if it is recycled at the end of its life.
• Governance: The decision-making process of participation focuses on local sovereignty and

global federation.
• Economic model: The possibility of agreement with Abacus, in 2017, has allowed the project to get
a new dimension by introducing machine cooperative to the recycling circuit. In that sense, there
are good prospects for paid services growth (e.g., equipment redistribution, devices appraisal,
or reporting information).
• Technological policy: Based on decentralized open-source software.
• Social responsibility: The project is based on reuse to decrease unnecessary production impact.
3.1.9. Sentilo
Sentilo is a platform to collect data from sensors. It was formed by the Barcelona City Council in
2012 in the framework of the Internet of Things. The proposal was based on the scenario of exponential
sensors growth, when a space would be needed with structured information on each sensor system.
Ten other cities, such as Terrassa, have subsequently implemented it.
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• Governance: The organization works as a foundation and the participation model is open.
• Economic model: Some of the proceedings are published on the website.
• Technological policy: FOSS (LGPL3).
• Social responsibility: One of the project’s objectives is to avoid duplicate networks.
3.1.10. Pam a Pam

The platform, born in 2012, is a project by Setem and XES (two organizations linked to SSE)
to promote responsible consumption. A community of volunteers maps the initiatives through a
qualitative questionnaire. Currently, the project is in a renewal phase with a revitalization plan to face
the difficulty of maintaining territorial community mobilization. At the same time, the promoters want
to get a self-managed sustainability funding model, apart from subsidies, and legal independence
from Setem.
• Governance: Periodic members’ assemblies and open participation.

• Economic model: A grant from Barcelona City Council, proposed by Setem, allowed the initial
founding. In 2014, a European grant permitted the incorporation of territorial facilitators and
launched a new website that was more systematic and elaborate.
• Technological policy: FOSS.
• Knowledge policy: Open data on demand. The new website will allow it to be downloaded.
• Social responsibility: The whole project is linked to the social and solidarity economy.
3.2. Curve of Growth and Evolutionary Stages of the Cases

The curve of growth shown in Figure 2 represents the stages of evolution and growth of an
organization, with an initial kick-off, deep growth, maturation with stabilization, and the renewal or
gradient phase. At the co-creation session, each of the 10 cases positioned themselves on the curve.
The cases positioned themselves in various stages on this curve of growth. The majority of them,
however, located themselves in a positive stage of their activity.
Figure 2. Summary of project stage evolution: (1) El Recetario; (2) SmartIB; (3) Goteo; (4) Katuma;
(5) Bdtonline; (6) XOBB; (7) FreeSound; (8) eReuse; (9) Sentilo; (10) Pam a Pam.
3.3. Case Comparison Analysis

According to the results (Table 2: case comparison between the cases of the commons balance),
none of the cases fulfill 100% of the five qualities. However, the majority of them accomplish aspects
of the commons star collaborative economy review at a good level. Cases 3 (Goteo), 8 (eReuse), and
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especially 10 (Pam a Pam) achieve in a holistic approach achieving the majority of commons criteria.
Two of these projects (Goteo and Pam a Pam) are in a post-maturation evolutionary stage. The qualities
linked to the non-profit economic dimension and open participation in governance are the ones more
cases fulfill, while technological decentralization, open data, and inclusion indicators (in these order)
are the areas less fulfilled by the cases. The governance and economic model get the best evaluation,
but open participation and non-profit organization have better valuation than cooperative governance
and transparency, respectively. Overall, Case 2 (SmartIB), which is in the early platform development
stage, has accomplished the fewest criteria.
Table 2. Case comparison between the cases of the commons balance. Green: fulfilment, Orange:
Partial fulfilment; Red: unfulfillment. Cases: (1) El Recetario; (2) SmartIB; (3) Goteo; (4) Katuma;
(5) Bdtonline; (6) XOBB; (7) FreeSound; (8) eReuse; (9) Sentilo; (10) Pam a Pam.
Dimensions Sub-Dimensions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Type of organization
GOV
Open participation
Goal
ECON
Transparency
FOSS
TECH
Decentralized
Copyleft
KNOWL
Open data
Inclusion
SOC
Green
4. Discussion
According to the application of the framework to the sample of 10 cases, we observe that there
is no case which fulfills all of the dimensions, but several modalities of being pro-democratic as a
digital platform.
Regarding business models, the majority of the 10 cases studied depart from a grant or public
funding model and instead have a grassroots character. Four of the projects were connected to H2020
European funds. The main problem of this model is project maintenance when the economic support
ends. Only one of the 10 cases mentioned here was awarded and used the services for entrepreneurship
of Barcelona Activa, the Barcelona agency of development.
Regarding governance, several of the cases had the intention to get another legal constitution
at the time of the study. The current legal formulas for economic association do not adapt well to
commons collaborative economy activity. Several of these cases were provided by institutions, whether
universities, such as FreeSound and eReuse with the UPF, or public administrations, as in the case
of Sentilo being supported by the Barcelona City Council. Those that were legally constituted did
so through an association (the simplest formula bureaucratically), a foundation, or a cooperative.
In this sense, some associations (Bdtonline and Katuma, for example) manifested in the interviews
the intention to become cooperatives. Others were already in the process of doing so (such as XOBB).
We also observed other cases of collaborative economy platforms (such as femProcomuns) that were
constituted as cooperatives but were not analyzed in this initial study. If the legal cooperative formula
spreads among collaborative economy platform projects, as this investigation has found, we can expect
new bonds in the growth of cooperatives [23] and the expansion of the social solidarity economy
movement in the city of Barcelona [24].
Regarding technological policies, the majority of cases considered FOSS. At the same time, almost
all of them centralized their architecture. In the same sense, with regard to knowledge policies, open
licenses were more often extended than open data.
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Accomplishment of social responsibility criteria in the cases analyzed was not regular. Some
cases were highly connected to environmental uses (such as eReuse or Katuma) while other favored
social inclusion (such as XOBB). If we assess the 10 cases together, both subdimensions—green and
inclusion—were half fulfilled.
Our analysis reflects another relevant issue to consider for future research into the ecosystem
dimension of the cases. Collaborative economy has an important presence in Barcelona. More than
1000 cases have been identified as commons collaborative economies (see directori.p2pvalue.eu) [18].
The model is also very adaptable. A total of 33 areas of activity (with a broad range: culture, leisure,
shopping, etc.) where the model is present in Barcelona have been identified [10]. Barcelona’s
collaborative economy has an important ecosystem dimension. This phenomenon links with the high
number of social innovation practices that have a great tradition in the city [25] and shows the role
of citizens in its transformation [26]. This is the case of the collaborative economy platform Katuma
(one of the studied cases), for example, which is a potential tool to scale the activity of agroecology
cooperatives that have been in Barcelona for over three decades [27].
The 10 cases analyzed showed different levels of connection with the Social and Solidarity
Economy (SSE) and Digital Commons framework, network, and values. On the one hand, Goteo was
the strongest project in the Digital Commons area. On the other hand, Pam a Pam was the most mature
project with the SSE framework in terms of digital platform.
Despite the strong ecosystem, the majority of initiatives start but remain at initial stages, as a
fabric of ideas and training, or kick off and grow to a certain level of satisfactory activity. Frequently,
there is neither the expectation nor the intention to scale largely. The 10 cases in our sample positioned
themselves at a developmental or mature position in the curve of growth, even if they were not
considered “mainstream” or established with the big public. This is consistent with the results of the
P2P Value investigation over a sample of 300, which pointed to a normal distribution of “success”
(many medium cases), instead of a power law distribution with few very successful and the majority
unsuccessful [28].
To sum up, our investigation shows that, beyond the controversial and unethical unicorn economy
platforms, an alternative model of collaborative economy exists based on democratic qualities of
procommon. The nature of these procommon alternatives is connected to the development of
the platforms based on the principles of cooperativism. Nevertheless, the main challenge of these
procommon collaborative economy projects is their scalability and sustainability.
Regarding future research, even if this study has allowed testing a framework to evaluate the
qualities of sustainability and pro-democratization collaborative economy platforms, we consider it
necessary to conduct a new investigation. It would, on the one hand, contemplate a broader sample
of cases and, on the other hand, cosnider platform projects with different characterizations, from
unicorn platforms to procommon platforms, passing through hybrid projects. This new research
should provide a broader view of the key aspects of each of the approaches and the pathways of
connection and learning between them.
Author Contributions: M.F.M. and R.E. contributed to the design and implementation of the research, to the
analysis of the results and to the writing of the manuscript.
Funding: This research is part of the work carried out by the Dimmons research group in the framework of DECODE
project (funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme, under grant agreement number 732546).
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Article
Engaging the Senses: The Potential of Emotional Data
for Participation in Urban Planning
Afif Fathullah and Katharine S. Willis *
School of Art, Design and Architecture (Faculty of Arts & Humanities), Roland Levinsky Building, Drake Circus,
Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK; afif.fathullah@students.plymouth.ac.uk
* Correspondence: katharine.willis@plymouth.ac.uk; Tel.: +44-1752-585191
Received: 3 July 2018; Accepted: 11 September 2018; Published: 21 September 2018
Abstract: This paper presents an exploratory study on the potential for sharing urban data; one where
citizens create their own data and use it to understand and influence urban planning decisions.
The aim of the study is to explore new models of participation through the sharing of emotional
data and focuses on the relationship between the physical space and emotions through identifying
the links between stress levels and specific features of the urban environment. It addresses the
problem in urban planning that, while people’s emotional connection with the physical urban setting
is often valued, it is rarely recognised or used as a source of data to understand future decision
making. The method involved participants using a (GSR) device linked to location data to measure
participant’s emotional responses along a walking route in a city centre environment. Results show
correlations between characteristics of the urban environment and stress levels, as well as how
specific features of the city spaces create stress ‘peaks’. In the discussion we review how the data
obtained could contribute to citizens creating their own information layer—an emotional layer—that
could inform a shared approach to participation in urban planning decision-making. The future
implications of the application of this method as an approach to public participation in urban planning
are also considered.
Keywords: emotions; participation; digital participation; physiological sensors; galvanic skin

response; GSR; stress levels; emotional layer; urban
1. Introduction—Sharing Cities
A sharing cities approach focuses on bring local people together through shared activities and
cooperation for the benefit of the city and includes initiatives such as carsharing, community currencies,
cohousing, hackerspaces, timebanks and tool or kitchen libraries. These new forms of sharing,
enabled by technological devices and platforms [1] work by enabling citizens to create, adapt and
exploit data [2] and can create new ways in which citizens participate in the governance of the city.
For example, civic apps, developed by citizens, civic organisations and commercial companies [3] have
become widespread and typically create some form of two-way interaction where citizens contribute
to commenting on or providing data on public services usually offered by the city such as crime
prevention, rubbish collection, public transportation and pollution reduction. Mclaren and Agymen
present as new model for collaboration and sharing around the city where “the same measures that
enable sharing online, also–if civil liberties are properly protected–enable collective politics online.
We see the increasingly blurred nexus between urban- and cyberspace enabling transformation–this
time in the political domain. These spaces are fundamentally important for forms of participation
invented and controlled by the people” [4]. This takes a model of participation, or sharing data that
is termed ‘co-production’ whereby ‘citizens perform the role of partner rather than customer in the
delivery of public services’ [5]. The challenge is how to enable citizens who are non-experts to gather,

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 98
analyse and share data in a way that can meaningfully contribute to urban planning processes. The aim
of this paper is to look at the potential of emotional data for enabling participation in urban planning,
that contributes towards a shared cities approach. The objective of this approach to propose that a
sharing emotional data can enable better insights of the city and its inhabitants which could lead to a
citizen-centred approach in urban planning processes.
In this paper, we take the approach that sharing practices present an alternative model of
participation in city decision-making. Conventional citizen participation methods in city planning
are typically linear and include referenda, public hearings, public surveys, charettes, public advisory
committees or focus groups which often require the participants to be physical present at particular
time and place (see Figure 1). The qualitative nature of data gathering and sharing means that citizens
that have input into such consultations typically participate through methods such as completing
surveys and contributing verbal comments, which are qualitative in nature and require further analysis
to be used effectively. These forms of data are not easily translatable into the types and format of data
and outcomes that are used by urban planners; such as urban plans, maps and GIS data. In addition
factors such as the time required of citizens to participate often results in apathy among citizens [6],
so that actual participation rarely represents a majority of inhabitants or involves the full range of
stakeholders [7].
Figure 1. Current model of participation in Urban Planning process.
Digital technologies can address some of the issues of participation in the urban planning
process by enabling a more accessible system for the public to shape their neighbourhood’s future [8].
Munster et al. outline potential advantages of digital participation which include the use of wider
pool of knowledge through broader audience and participants, which creates an interactive and
communication-oriented planning process [9]. They can lower barriers for participation, involve a
wider range of participants, and by enabling people to discuss urban design proposals in place can
foster interest in public participation [9]. This offers new perspectives for designers and planners
to “transforming planning work into an iterative, agile work process, in contrast to sequential and
linear workflows that have shaped urban design practice in the past” [9]. Crivellaro et al. [10]
have looked at how local people use data sharing through Facebook to mobilise around a local
social movement. They recognised the importance of forming a like-minded community, but also
acknowledged the struggle of the group to translate their emotions to the authority and decision makers.
Hasler et al. [11] in another research found that the multiplication and diversity of contributions by
citizens through digital participation increases complexity which means that prioritising relevant data
can be problematic. This illustrates how data sharing can facilitate discussions that are planning-related,
but turning them into actionable policies proven to be difficult. The research question this paper
therefore seeks to explore is: Can sharing emotional data offer a method for participation in the urban
planning process?
The paper presents a potential methodological contribution in terms of the incorporation of
physiological sensing device and GPS tracking technologies for measure and analysing emotional
data in urban environments. To do this, we first review the literature on the urban planning process,
showing how the development of the discipline has sought to enable citizen participation. This is
mapped against Arnstein’s ‘Ladder of Participation’ to highlight how much of this participation
typically does not enable citizens to control and act in the process, and is therefore the participation
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is often tokenistic. The potential of incorporating digital tools for participation is presented, and in
particular, the value of incorporating emotional data as a way of capturing a more person- centric
understanding of urban space. In the study described in the paper, a small number of participants used
a galvanic skin response (GSR) linked to location data to record stress levels in a walk through an urban
city centre space with different characteristics. The findings aim to explore whether this emotional
data might have benefit for enabling new models of shared data in urban planning processes.
1.1. The Challenge of Participation in the Urban Planning Process

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when,
they are created by everybody” [12].
Many people now live in cities, but despite Jacob’s plea above, very few participate in how they
are created, designed and planned. Therefore, the contribution of this study addresses the following
broader question: ‘how to enable meaningful participation in the urban planning process’? To do this,
the paper first provides some context on how urban planning evolved and the developing role of
participation. The origins if urban planning in the western world in the early 20th Century, were heavily
influenced by the rational-comprehensive approach where the planning sequence involves: a survey
of the region, an analysis of the survey, and finally the development of the plan [13]. Hall [14] argued
that Geddes “gave planning a logical structure” by developing the survey-analysis-plan sequence
of planning. However, this method of planning has been criticised to be too top-down; seeing the
planner as “the omniscient ruler, who should create new settlement forms without interference or
question” [14] as well as being too reductionist as planners have to make assumptions and predictions
which required them to have complete certainty [15]. This then caused the planners to proceed on the
basis of simplifying the world around them which later led to a lot of failure of the predictions [15].
The failures of the rational-comprehensive approach in urban planning led it to being succeeded by
synoptic planning approach in 1960s and Hall argued that this change represents a fundamental shift
in the role of the planners and their relationship with the public. However, Faludi [15] argued that this
early form of participation was still based on the assumption that the society is homogenous–implying
the homogeneity of interest. This means that participation is only required to validate and uncritically
legitimise the goals of planning and any objection to planning proposal tends to be stigmatised [15].
Even when public participation has become an integral part of current urban planning process,
Innes and Booher [6] argued that they still “do not achieve genuine participation”. This is because
current form of public participation does not satisfy members of the public that they are being heard
and often does not improve the decisions that agencies and public officials make and [6]. The scepticism
posed by Innes and Booher [6] to the way that current participation is being practiced could be traced
back to Arnstein’s widely known ‘Ladder of Participation’ [16]. As she put it, “there is a critical
difference between going through the empty ritual of participation and having the real power needed
to affect the outcomes of the process” [16]. The fundamental point of these criticisms was that if
urban planners seek public participation, it is necessary that there be a redistribution of power [16].
She regarded power in public participation as a ladder or a spectrum ranging from ‘nonparticipation’
through to ‘degrees of citizen power’ (see Figure 2), which correspond to the degree of power or control
participants can exercise in the quest of shaping the outcome. The ladder outlines steps of public
participation from manipulation (level 1), education (level 3), and consultation (level 4), through to
sharing power through ‘partnership’ (level 6) and beyond.
Notably, Arnstein’s framework regards consultation as ‘tokenism’ similar to the way Innes
and Booher [6] viewed the level of public participation in current urban planning process.
However, Painter [17] argued against Arnstein’s analysis by stating that her ladder of participation
model inaccurately apprehends power i.e., it confuses ‘potential power’ with ‘actual power’ [17].
While the official decision-making power may rest with institutional decision-makers in a consultation
process, to regard the process as tokenistic disregards the fact that “if the exercise of influence
[by participants] is effective, then this formal power is an empty shell” [17] (p. 23). He also argues
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that Arnstein’s model often assume decision-making in planning occurs at a single point in the
process. This ignores the fact that there is rarely an identifiable, or single, ‘point of decision’ in
policy-making [17]. The primary value of this discussion is that it exposes that participation in
planning can include the exercise of both formal and informal power. Hence, having power in
decision-making processes is not the only way towards achieving genuine participation, as it could
also be realised through ranges of other participatory activities—as long as the engagement with
citizens contribute positively towards the outcome of a planning project.
Figure 2. Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation.
1.1.1. Emotions and Planning

This paper explores whether sharing emotional data about a particular city setting can be used to
inform the urban planning process. Although the link between the built environment and human’s
emotional aspects in urban planning research has found a growing interest in recent years, it is still a
rather new approach in the field [18]. Typically, in urban planning, planning is seen as an objective
process, so emotion is not seen as qualities or analysis that can be meaningfully included in decision
making [19]. They believe that urban planners should avoid allowing emotions to influence their
analysis or recommendations and this is largely due to the fact that urban planners are taught to
operate in a rational manner [19]. Despite the neglect of emotional aspects by many planning officials,
there are also some urban planners who do recognise the importance of emotions within the field.
For example, Lynch [20] recognises the emotional aspect through its link with emotions and mental
maps while Ferreira [21] has urged that emotions should be presented as constructive drives with the
power to positively inspire the planner to become a more competent professional. Porter et al. [22] on
the other hand have claimed that attachments to community members improve the ability of planners
to understand and work with residents while Gunder and Hillier [23] have interpreted planning
issues through a Lacanian psychological model which acknowledge the entire process of becoming
and being a planner is typically associated with strong emotional experiences. These authors have
provided a meaningful theoretical discourse in terms of acknowledging the importance of emotions
within urban planning. However, the majority of them have kept their focus on the planner side of
the equation rather than on the users’ side. Most of them recognise that planners should positively
address emotions but very few have put the emphasis on citizens’ emotional interactions with the
urban environments itself. This should not be the case if we were to truly understand the relationship
between emotions and urban spaces. According to Zeile et al. ‘the long-term goal is to develop a
new information layer for planners, in which a visualization of the measured spatial perception is
possible. These visualizations allow conclusions about human behavior in an urban environment and
enable a new citizen-centered perspective in planning processes’ (Zeile, Resch, Exner, and Sagl, 2015).
Hence, by linking it to public participations and the developments of digital tools, the next subsection
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will review some of the literature and studies around the spatial-emotional interactions of the city’s
users as its main focus to understand the significance of emotions in the urban planning field.
1.1.2. Digital Tools as Means for Measuring Emotions

Recent technological developments have allowed the incorporation of emotions in public
participation within the planning field. It also allows current urban planners to increase their
understanding of the relationship between citizens and urban spaces by measuring their emotions
using newly developed digital tools. Most of the studies around this topic can largely be divided into
three categories based on the tools they have used to extract emotional data either through: (1) social
media, (2) mobile apps, or (3) physiological wearable devices. The similarities within all of these
studies and perhaps the most important one for incorporating emotional experiences in spatial analysis
is the capability to cross reference emotional data with accurate locational data i.e., the ability to
geo-locate those data to a specific place within a city. For example, under the first category, Mislove et
al. [24] extract the moods of people from different cities by mining information on social media, in this
case, Twitter. This information however tends be at a low level of granularity; it is generally at a large
spatial scale such as city, state or region and not collected at a detailed spatial level, such as a street
or a city centre. Nevertheless, there is other recent research on mining emotional responses towards
particular spaces from social media such as Tauscher and Neumann [25] who generated sentiment
maps of tourist locations.
The Urban Emotion Research Lab developed a methodology for the extraction of contextual
emotion information for decision support in spatial planning which enabled crowdsourcing
physiological conditions (technical sensors measuring psycho-physiological parameters) and subjective
emotions (human sensors contributing subjectively perceived emotions) [26–28]. Drawing on this
work, Hauthal and Burghardt [29] and Aiello et al. [30] both extract location-based emotions from
photo titles, descriptions, and tags from Panoramio and Flickr respectively to generate maps of specific
streets within various cities with emotional attributes. Mody et al. designed a location-based social
networking tool that enables users to share and store their emotional feelings about places ‘WiMo’ [31].
They found that it was possible to create a recognisable and useable framework for gathering users
individual emotional responses in a shared map interface. Key to this was defining ‘places’ rather than
distinct geographical locations as these elicited an emotional response. Meanwhile, Zeile et al. [32] has
established a dedicated algorithm to source emotional expressions from Twitter before plotting them
onto the map of downtown Boston, USA.
Some researchers have started to focus on developing mobile apps, to gather users’ wellbeing
and feelings and to relate them to the geographic reference of their occurrence. For example,
Ettema and Smajic (2015) used smartphones to gather self-recorded experiences of students during
a walk. They have then later found out that the level of happiness was the highest in areas
where many activities were happening and where a lot of people were around (Ettema and Smajic,
2015). MacKerron and Mourato (2013) in their project “Mappiness” used an iPhone app to collect
frequent reports of temporary happiness at random times. They found that participants are generally
happier in green or natural environments than in urban environments (MacKerron and Mourato,
2013). Similarly, Klettner et al., (2013) designed mobile apps called EmoMap to collect people’s
emotional responses to space through mobile phones, as well as modelling, and visualizing these data.
The findings indicate that environments varying according to the amount of vegetation and traffic are
perceived differently, with highest positive ratings for the urban-green area, and lowest ratings in the
heavy traffic urban area (Klettner et al., 2013).
While semantic analysis from social media data and citizen feedbacks from mobile apps offer
subjective evaluations on emotional experience of participants, physiological emotional extraction
technique using wearable devices propose the investigation of the more objective element of emotions.
This is on the basis that physiological responses would provide useful indications of the users’ current
emotional states when they interact with the physical environment. Over the last ten years, some urban
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researchers have been investigating this relationship and Nold’s [33] ‘emotional cartography’ is perhaps
the most significant in laying a fundamental underpinning to explore the changes in physiology in
the urban space. His ‘BioMapping’ project, undertaken between the years 2004 to 2009, was the
first to integrate GPS data with biometric human sensor data and explore the idea of visualising
cartographically referenced emotional data. In the fieldwork, he gathered the change of the skin
conductance levels and skin temperature of participants wearing a galvanic skin response (GSR) device
as they walked in several cities, which was then mapped based on their GPS locations to describe areas
in terms of emotional arousal [33].
Similar work was done by Zeile et al. [34] who mapped the stress levels of cyclists in Cambridge,
Massachusetts by measuring skin conductance levels during their ride using a GSR device. They also
attached a video recording device to allow footages to be taken along the route in order to accurately
understand what caused the physiological changes in their participants [34]. A dedicated smartphone
app was then used to allow geo-tagged reporting of the experiment. Their findings include the
detection of what caused negative arousal in cyclists and they found out that the triggers include
dangerous intersections, physical obstacles, pedestrians crossing, cars passing close by and damaged
road surface [34]. They also mapped the cycling route with all the moments of stress and triggers as
well as some specific emotions based on the input from the participants and their rides.
The studies conducted by Nold [33] and Zeile et al. [32] all benefited from the use of the GSR
device that offers physiological data collection of emotions of the participants. As the GSR device
measures levels of emotional arousal through the change in skin conductance and resistance levels,
these data can be easily quantified resulting in a more objective measure of emotions rather than
just qualitative. This method is valuable since objective measurement of emotions has proven to be
beneficial in terms of producing a more accurate representation of emotions. Hence, the next subsection
will explore the mechanism operating the GSR device and its uses in measuring negative emotional
arousal within the field. As mentioned previously, the work of Zeile and colleagues and Nold have
undertaken key work [28,33,35] that has objectively investigated the relationship between emotions
and physical environments using physiological responses methods. This work has laid important
theoretical and methodological foundations for integrating the use of galvanic skin response (GSR)
within urban spatial analysis and city planning, hence. In this paper, we draw on these methodological
approaches and further investigate the link between and urban spaces to gain understanding of how
features in the urban space can be mapped against emotional response and the corresponding potential
for this in participatory urban planning.
1.1.3. Physiological Measures of Stress Levels Using a GSR Device

A range of physiological measures has been employed to assess emotions in research. As mentioned
before, physiological responses of the sympathetic nervous system, especially changes in electrodermal
activity (EDA), blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol levels, are broadly used to reflect changes
in emotional arousals [36]. However, because the change in blood pressure and heart rate are also
influenced by physical activities, the EDA offers a more accurate measure of emotional arousal [36].
Boucsein have discussed EDA at length and regarded it as a common term for all electrical phenomena
including active and passive electrical properties which occurs in the skin [37]. One of the most
well-known EDA measures is the galvanic skin response (GSR) defined simply as ‘a change in the
ability of the skin to conduct electricity’ [37]. GSR can be measured using a GSR device in which
the fundamental physiological mechanism that operates the response is ‘the subtle change in sweat
secretion from eccrine sweat glands throughout the body which increased when there is a high
level of emotional arousal [35]. This phenomenon is called emotional sweating and can be observed
and measured most easily and accurately on hands and feet. As the secretion of sweat increases,
skin surfaces become moistier, thus improving the conduction of an electric current [35]. This allows
for the skin conductance and resistance level to increase or decrease, and this change is recorded by
the GSR device.
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The current state-of-the-art in physiological sensor data analysis research suggests that negative
emotional arousal can be correctly distinguished through the analysing of the skin conductance
level. According to leading researchers in the field, such as Kreibig [38] and Rodrigues et al. [39],
skin conductivity increases (while its resistivity decreases) when a negative experience occurs as this
negative arousal is an indicator for a stress event. Zeile et al. supported this argument as their study
has found out that “[if] for instance a test person has the experience of anger or fear—a negative
emotion—skin conductance (the difference between sweat production and absorption of the skin)
increases” [32]. Dakker et al. found in studies that GSR can be used not just to detect emotions but also
for change detection in emotions since ‘emotional experiences trigger changes in autonomic arousal
quite impressively’. This can be used to link levels of emotional arousal with stress [40]. Bakker et al.
distinguish stress in patterns of sharp rising emotional arousal at the peak, prior to a slow return to a
relaxed state (see Figure 3) as highlighted in grey in the adapted GSR data graph below.
Figure 3. (Adapted from Bakker et al.)—‘An example of acute stress pattern observed from GSR data
and how it can be mapped to the symbolic (time-stamped) representation of person’s stress’ [40].
In this paper, we focus on change detection in emotions using a GSR device and through
correlating with changes in the urban context aim to investigate whether this has potential for mapping
emotional change to particular urban planning features and qualities.

In this study, individual participants were asked to walk through a specific route in the city,
while linked up to a galvanic skin response (GSR) device attached to their fingers and a GPS tracker
app (Figure 4) in a backpack which they carried. Stress levels were measured using the GSR device
which operates by detecting the subtle change in sweat secretion from eccrine sweat glands. Prior to
the walk the quality of the GSR signal was checked in the visualisation software and the data feed
was tested with the participant to resolve any potential issues and visualize the impact of breathing,
movements, and talking.
During the fieldwork, the GSR device was first fixed to participants’ fingers and then connected
to a laptop that runs an accompanying software called GSR Studio (Figure 5) that records changes
detected by the GSR device and automatically plots a readable graph of skin resistance levels against
time. GPS data was recorded at 1-min intervals during the walk, and the GSR data was then read in
conjunction with features and characteristics of the urban setting to identify how this correlated with
emotional arousal levels. In this study, the focus is on positive and negative emotional arousal.
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Figure 4. Experiment set-up consisting of a finger mounted GSR device, a laptop, and a backpack
linked to a GPS Phone Tracker App that was used to track participant’s location at 1-min intervals
during the walk.
Figure 5. GSR Studio software plots data into graph in real time (photo from supplier).
The GSR device used in this study (https://www.happy-electronics.eu/biofeedback/products-en-

2/skin-response-biofeedback/) was a low cost and low-tech piece of equipment (costing under €100),
and required no specialist training prior to use.
2.1. Participants
A total of 9 participants, 3 males and 6 females, aged between 23–28 years old were recruited
for the study. They were selected based on the criteria that they had lived in the city for between
1–3 years, so that they had some basic equivalence in terms of the background spatial knowledge of
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the setting. All of them were international students at the University of Plymouth. The participants
were accompanied on the walk by a researcher, who followed the participant’s’ unobtrusively.
2.2. Setting
The route was chosen primarily because it covers three distinct areas in Plymouth City Centre.
Participants were asked to walk from Plymouth Hoe, a popular recreational park in Plymouth,
continuing their walk through Armada Way, a pedestrianized area, and ending at the North Road East
(see Figure 6), a walk which took about twenty minutes in total. The urban spaces along the walk had
different characteristics, ranging from the park at the beginning of the walk to a busy road at the end
of the walk (see Table 1).

Figure 6. Study Route—Participants start walking from Plymouth Hoe, through Armada Way and
ends in North Road East.
Table 1. Names and types of key urban spaces along the walking route- ranging from green space on
Plymouth Hoe to a busy road at North Read East.
Location on Walk Name Type of Space Urban Characteristics

Start of the walk Plymouth Hoe Park Fully pedestrianised greenspace with the least traffic
Mid-way through A mix of both pedestrianised area and traffic
Armada Way Urban pedestrianised
the walk (with some green space and natural features)
End of the walk North Road East Urban road Busy road with very limited natural features
The route chosen for this study consists of three distinct areas summarized in the table below
(Table 1):
The route included several junctions with varying levels of car and pedestrian traffic summarized
in the table below (see Figure 7 and Table 2): These had different characteristics, with some junctions
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being busy with high levels of traffic, some being pedestrianized and some being road junctions but
relatively quiet.

Figure 7. Participant’s walking route—main crossings or junctions along the route.
Table 2. Names and characteristics of road junctions along the walking route.
Name Type of Space Characteristics

Citadel Road Busy road junction Busy road with high levels of traffic
Busy road, with busy Busy road with high levels of traffic, including buses and taxis.
Royal Parade
pedestrian crossing Main pedestrian crossing of city centre with high pedestrian traffic
Mayflower Street Road junction Busy road
New George Street Pedestrianised Fully pedestrianised wide shopping avenue with high pedestrian traffic
Cornwall Street Pedestrianised Fully pedestrianised wide shopping avenue with high pedestrian traffic
Derry Avenue Quiet road junction Road with low levels of traffic
There were also twelve identified crossings and junctions along the walking route which require
participants to cross to get the other side. One of them is in the Plymouth Hoe area, six in the Armada
Way area and five in the North Road East area. The nature of the setting means, with the different
types of spaces can be said to correlate with typical regional city centre environments in the UK.
2.3. Limitations of the Methods

There are several limitations in the methodology, which should be taken into account, and these
are described below in order to demonstrate how these were allowed for in the results. In terms
of the participant’s there was a low number, and we did not test participants for their background
spatial knowledge (although participants were selected based on spatial knowledge criteria). As a
consequence, in our results the work is presented as exploratory in nature and the analysis is limited
to qualitative outcomes. The second limitation of the study is the accuracy of the GSR equipment
used in the study. A low cost GSR device was chosen for this study as it is aimed at demonstrating
the possibility for the use of such equipment on a wider scale and by non-experts. Therefore the GSR
results cannot be assumed to have the accuracy of data from products such as Movisens Edamove
or Empatica E4 [37] (although Boucsein et al. do state that a finger GSR device, such as that used in
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this study can be more sensitive than a wrist-based device). According to Bakker et al. ‘the reliable
translation of physiological data gathered by using sensor technology into the “stress level rates” is
only possible when additional sources of information are available’ [40]. The results are presented
comparatively showing the difference or similarities between participants rather than as discrete,
and were mapped using the GPS data against the features of the physical context. The use of GPS
locational data mapped against the GSR data means that it was possible to assess the relation between
spatial context and emotional response data at a fairly fine grain level.
3. Results
3.1. General Change in Participants’ Emotions

The results showed that eight out of nine participants started with higher skin resistance level (less
sweaty fingers) and ended the walk with a lower skin resistance level (sweatier fingers) (see Figure 8).
As higher skin resistance level equates to lower stress levels, the change pattern in the results indicates
that almost all the participants had lower levels of emotional arousal at the beginning of the walk
i.e., at Plymouth Hoe park compared to when they were walking along the North Road East at the end
of the experiment. Only one participant (participant 06) ended the walk at about the same level as
when they started it.

Figure 8. Results—Combined results of all participants showing a general trend of a higher skin
resistance level at the start of the walk and lower skin resistance at the end.
It could also be observed that seven out of nine participant’s recorded their highest level of skin
resistance at the start of the walk in Plymouth Hoe than any other area of the walking route, and their
skin resistance levels gradually decreased throughout the journey as they enter Armada Way and
ended at the lowest level at the end of North Road East. If we see this pattern of emotional change
as being linked to stress levels, then this result indicates that most participants find Plymouth Hoe
park to be the least stressful area followed by Armada Way and then North Road East, where most
participants find it to be most stressful. Two out of the nine participants (participant 02 and 06) on the
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other hand appeared to have their lowest stress levels when they were walking in the Armada Way.
However, both of their apparent stress levels then changed dramatically as it steeply increased when
they entered the North Road East area.
Further analysis on the participants’ skin resistance levels can be made by drawing trend lines of
their individual graphs for each area along the walking route. From the results it can be observed that
the highest number of participants (5 out of 9 people) recorded an increasing level of skin resistance
while walking through Plymouth Hoe. This suggests that most participants find Plymouth Hoe to be
the least stressful place as their level of stress decreases as they walk through the park. Meanwhile,
as participants walk through Armada Way, five participants experienced decreasing skin resistance
compared to the number of people who experience increasing skin resistance levels (four participants).
At North Road East, all of the nine participants recorded a decreasing skin resistance level. This further
suggests that North Road East is the most stressful area compared to the other two areas as all of the
participant’s skin resistance levels decreased as they walked along the road.
The aggregate emotional arousal levels for all of the participants, where an average of the
participants’ data was visualised and projected onto the map of the city centre (see Figure 9), show a
clear correlation between stress peaks and urban features.

Figure 9. Average of all the participant’s stress levels combined and visualised onto the map
of Plymouth City Centre, showing the ‘peaks’ of negative emotional response at road crossings
and junctions.
The participant’s data showed ‘peaks’ (that correspond to Bakker’s et al.’s findings [40]) that
can be identified as sharp increases in stress levels whenever they encountered road junctions along
the walk. In addition, the figure also shows that as participants walk from Plymouth Hoe to North
Road East, their apparent stress level gradually increases, providing another an indication as to how
different areas within the city affect the level of stress of their inhabitants.
3.2. Change in Stress Levels at Crossings and Junctions

Another clear finding from this study is the relationship road crossings and junctions have with
the change in stress levels of the participants. A typical participant is shown in Figure 10 with the
crossings and GSR data levels indicated. The overall results (see Figures 11–13) show that all of the
crossings have at least three people experiencing a sudden drop in skin resistance level- or a stress
‘peak’. Crossings at Citadel Road, Royal Parade, and Mayflower Street (see Figure 11) recorded the
highest number of participants (i.e., all of the 6 participants) experiencing a sudden a stress ‘peak’.
Derry Avenue crossing and junctions at New George St. and Cornwall St., on the contrary, recorded the
lowest number of participants (3 participants) that experienced the stress ‘peak’ (see Figure 12).
The other 3 participants recorded generally unchanged stress levels when encountering these roads.
Crossings at Citadel Road, Royal Parade and Mayflower St. are notably busier than junctions at New
George St., Cornwall St., and Derry Ave. This resulted in more participants experiencing a sudden
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stress ‘peak’ at the former 3 crossings rather than at the latter 3. In fact, junctions at New George St.
and Cornwall St. are at a fully pedestrianised area thus have no traffic presence.
Figure 10. Typical participant’s GSR data graph with crossings indicated and corresponding stress
‘peaks’ circled.
3.3. Relationship between Stress Levels and the Presence of Traffic and Natural Features
These different characteristics of each type of urban space encountered on the walk provides
a clear variable which allows this paper to narrow down its research i.e., the relationship between
emotions and physical environment can be studied in a more explicit manner. This means that the
connection emotions have with specific urban features, in this case the presence of traffics and natural
features, can be established more clearly. One observation that could be made from the findings is that
area which was had the most ‘green’ space and natural features (Plymouth Hoe) created a generally
less stressful environment for the participants. In contrast, areas with relatively less green space caused
participants to feel less emotionally aroused. This observation is supported by many other previous
studies such as MacKerron and Mourato’s [41] “Mappiness” project and Klettner et al. [42] EmoMap
project which have shown that green or natural environments have positive effects on emotions.
The results suggest that participants feel the least stressed at areas where the traffic levels were
low and vice versa exhibited higher stress levels at busy roads. This can also explain the difference
in number of participants experiencing stress ‘peaks’ at different junctions along the route. It was
noted that Citadel Road, Royal Parade, and Mayflower Street junctions in particular have the most
number of people experiencing the stress ‘peaks’ as they are significantly busier crossings than the
others. Crossings at New George St., and Cornwall St. on the other hand have the least number
of people experiencing sudden increase in stress levels because they are notably calmer and less
busy in terms of traffic presence. In fact, junctions at New George St. and Cornwall St. are fully
pedestrianised areas and thus the levels of traffic presence at these areas are actually zero. Previous
studies, particularly, Klettner et al. [42] in their EmoMap project supported this claim as they have also
found that participants give the lowest positive ratings (in terms of emotional response) when they are
in an urban area with heavy traffic.
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Figure 11. Crossings at Citadel Road, Royal Parade and Mayflower Street recorded the highest number
of participants (all of the 6 participants) experiencing a stress ‘peaks’.
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Figure 12. Derry Ave. crossing and junctions at New George St. and Cornwall St. on the contrary,
recorded the lowest number of participants (3 participants) that experience the stress ‘peak’.
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Figure 13. Overall results from all of the 6 participants with their graphs cross referenced with their
GPS locational data. It could be noted that all of the crossings have at least 3 people experiencing a
sudden drop in skin resistance level which equates to a stress ‘peak’.
4. Discussion
As Nold and Zeile et al. have demonstrated [32,33] emotional data can offer a new layer of
data and provide new dimensions for both urban planners and citizens to share understanding of
the city they live in. This study identified two potential ways in which emotional data can be used;
firstly, through the link between a change in emotions and distinct urban planning features and
secondly through the change in process to people gathering their own quantitative emotional data
over time and in situ.
4.1. Changes in Emotions and the Link with Urban Planning Features
The findings show clear links between emotional response and corresponding characteristics of
urban spaces as follows:
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• Areas with more green space and natural features result in creating a less stressful environment
for the participants (e.g., Plymouth Hoe).
• Areas with higher levels of urban traffic (more cars) result in creating a more stressful environment
for the participants (e.g., North Road East).
• Road crossings and junctions result in stress ‘peaks’ or sudden increase in stress level by the
participants (e.g., Royal Parade).
The study identified a correlation between emotional stress ‘peaks’ and urban design features and
characteristics that could be used as a quantitative input into urban planning discussions. While this
study is small scale in terms of the number of participants, the nature of the findings does indicate
that the method could be replicated with larger number of participants to increase the level of data
and coverage. Shoval et al. [35] recognised that products of such analysis “lead to important insights
into how people perceive and interact emotionally with the urban environment; it can therefore be
of great use in an improved planning process” [35]. Zeile et al. have acknowledged that their results
can be used “as a source of information to help improve bicycle traffic planning and to identify peaks
in urban planning deficiencies” [34]. The current model of planning allows for consultation, but this
is limited in terms of modes of participation and the information layer (see Figure 1 earlier in this
paper). The gathering of emotional data and the subsequent understanding gained from this analysis
would help create a readily available layer of shared data (Figure 14) directly inputting into the urban
planning process.
Figure 14. Emotional Data Model of participation in Urban Planning process.
While this study was undertaken in an existing city space, there is also the potential to draw
some more general conclusions that could inform urban design proposals. It could therefore provide
better insights of the city and its inhabitants—enabling a new citizen-centered perspective in urban
planning processes.
4.2. Physiological Data for Citizen-Centric Participatory Planning

A shared approach to participation in urban planning processes could involve the provision of a
new information layer within urban planning analysis through the gathering of citizens’ emotional data
through physiological responses methods. Unlike traditional forms of urban planning participation
such as public meetings, consultations and hearings, this study suggests that humans, as the users
of a city, could share qualitative emotional data. Jacobs [12] pointed out an important change in
urban planning procedures which includes bottom up processes of participation that proactively
involve citizens in urban change. This study has explored the potential of using physiological sensor
technology to directly, objectively and cheaply measure citizens’ emotions. Scaled up, this approach
would mean that a city could involve citizens in sharing emotional data that would regularly provide
new emotional data near real-time and as a readily available information layer to the city council.
The model used in this study was for citizens to gather their own data and share it with others in
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order to understand their experience of the city in a more quantitative manner. However, it should
be recognized that there are recognized and valid issues around the ethics and nature of consent
around crowdsourcing urban data. For instance Gabrys argues that ‘enabling citizens to monitor their
activities convert these citizens into unwitting gatherers and providers of data’ that can be used for
political or commercial purposes beyond that which citizens are aware of [43]. However, when used by
the citizen for their own benefit Haklay asserts that ‘the act of mapping itself can be an act of asserting
presence, rights to be heard or expression of personal beliefs in the way that the world should evolve
and operate’ [44].
When reviewed against Arnstein’s [16] ‘Ladder of Participation’, this method of using
physiological device to gather citizens’ emotional data would still fall under tokenism at either
‘consultation’ or ‘placation’ rung of the ladder. This is because participants of this study only provide
emotional data input and do not have the actual power to influence how the data will be used in
urban planning process. In the end, city planners still play a central role in planning decisions.
However, the lack of ‘citizen power’ in this participatory method could be outweighed by the fact
that using physiological sensing technology such as the GSR provides an accurate and objective data
resource of citizens’ emotions. It could also potentially be done at scale to create a large information
database. During a traditional consultation process, citizens would subjectively express concerns
about a planning project and the relevant authority would re-evaluate the project based on their
feedback. In this citizen sensing participatory planning approach however, there is no need to wait
until a planning project is established before actions or decisions could be made. In fact, the collection
of emotional data can be continuous and ongoing and can be used at any time to inform any new
planning projects. Therefore, for as long as the emotional data inputs from citizens influence the
outcome of any planning decisions, even without any exercise of ‘power’, this form of participatory
process could move beyond tokenism towards Arnstein’s model of ‘citizen power’.
5. Conclusions
A sharing cities approach can enable citizens to gather, share and analyse urban data which
can give them an enhanced understanding and greater accessibility in city planning decisions [45].
This tends to relate to enabling citizens to gain access to self-generated sources of data, which enables a
more informed understanding of issues in their urban environment. Digital participation using
technologies such as physiological sensing devices, smartphones, and GPS technology present
opportunities for a more effective and human-centred approach to participatory planning. This paper
explored the potential of citizen’s emotional data using digital tools such as the galvanic skin response
(GSR) and GPS devices to objectively measure emotional response of people to a geo-located urban
space. The study described in this paper extended the work of Nold (2009), Zeile et al. (2015) and
Shoval et al., (2017) who found that emotional data mapped against high-resolution spatial analysis can
have potential for informing urban planning decision making [35]. The potential of this method was
discussed, and future directions for the research would be to replicate the study with larger numbers
of participant’s and to test a range of different urban settings. In particular, it would be valuable to test
whether the findings around green space and busy roads creating different levels of emotional arousal
could be replicated in different, but comparable cities. Furthermore, the link between road junctions
and stress ‘peaks’ could have potential to be tested with a range of urban planning features. In terms
of participatory methods, these could be used by citizens at both pre- and post implementation stage
to quantitatively measure the actual response of people to an urban planning project.
The results prove that there is a significant relationship between humans and the physical
environments and by objectively measuring and analysing the data, this method provides innovative
opportunities for urban planners to understand how citizens relate and interact emotionally to the
city’s urban environment. The data gathered through this approach could add a new dimension in
the form of a new additional layer of information in urban planning analysis to assist urban planners
in decision-making processes. This has implications for urban planning policy in terms of how they
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could better incorporate participatory data into their practice, and how citizens could be empowered
to share their emotional experiences of the city.
Author Contributions: A.F. and K.S.W. developed the topic, methods and analytical framework; A.F. supervised
students and conducted the field investigations and analyzed the data; A.F. and K.S.W. wrote the paper.
Funding: This research received no external funding
Acknowledgments: Thank you to the support of the School of Architecture, Design and Environment at Plymouth
University, UK.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Article
Sharing and Riding: How the Dockless Bike Sharing
Scheme in China Shapes the City
Yiyun Sun 1,2
1 School of Management, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525 HP Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2 School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, CF10 3AT Cardiff, UK; yiyunsun@163.com;
Tel.: +86-134-262-88622
Received: 4 July 2018; Accepted: 31 July 2018; Published: 9 August 2018
Abstract: Over the last three years, the dockless bike sharing scheme has become prevalent in the
context of the boom in the sharing economy, the wide use of mobile online payment, the increasing
environmental awareness and the inherent market demand. This research takes Beijing as a case
study, investigates the users’ characteristics, their behaviour change, and perceptions of dockless bike
sharing scheme by the quantitative survey, and then analyzes the reasons behind it and how it has
changed the residents’ life in Beijing. This new kind of dockless shared bikes, with great advantages
of accessibility, flexibility, efficiency and affordability, helps to solve the ‘last mile’ problem, reduce the
travel time, and seems to be very environmentally-friendly and sustainable. However, with the help
of interview and document analysis, this research finds that the shared bikes are not the effective
alternative for the frequent car-users. Nevertheless, it also has numerous negative consequences
such as ‘zombie’ bikes blocking the sidewalks and vandalism to the bikes. The public is also
worried about their quality and safety, especially the issues of ‘right of way’. How to coordinate
and solve these problems is not only related to the future direction of the dockless bike sharing
scheme but also to the vital interests of the general public. Therefore, it is important to emphasize that
governments, enterprises, and the public participate in multi-party cooperation and build synergic
governance networks to carry forward the advantages and avoid the negative effects of the new bike
sharing system.
Keywords: bike sharing; sustainable mobility; sharing economic; urban studies
1. Introduction
In recent years, growing concerns over climate change, deteriorating urban environment and
unhealthy lifestyles have placed more attention on sustainable transportation alternatives such as
bicycles. The bicycle, compared to other kinds of vehicles, has many advantages for both cyclists and
society: it is a low-cost, low-polluting, health-improving way to travel [1]. In light of these benefits,
cycling has become a major component of visions of sustainable urban transport systems in Europe,
supported by market-based instruments, command-and-control approaches, as well as soft policy
measures [2].
China, like many of other countries, has experienced a rapid growth of bicycles from the
1970s to the 1990s. However, after the mid-1990s, bicycle usage steadily decreased as a result
of economic growth, increased urbanization, expanded city areas and a gradually deteriorating
cycling environment [3]. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Chinese government realized that
excessive dependence on cars has led to serious environmental pollution and resource constraints.
To preserve the environment and achieve a harmonious balance of economic growth, population,
resources and the environment, the Chinese government put forward the new urban development
mode of ‘a resource-conserving and environmentally-friendly society’, and had a major shift from fossil

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 68
fuels to renewable energy [4]. Nevertheless, a long history of bicycle usage in the country provides
great potential for bicycles, a green form of travel, to be part of public and private transportation.
Following the Chinese government’s new approach, Chinese municipal governments have heavily
subsidized the development of the Public Bike Sharing Program (PBSP) to encourage non-motorized
transport and offer a flexible, convenient, and low-cost mobility option to the people.
Yang et al. used the real spatial location data of the public bicycle-sharing systems of Hangzhou
and Ningbo in China, and discovered that the public bicycle-sharing systems can decrease the average
trip time of passengers and increase the efficiency of an urban public transport network, as well as
effectively improve the uneven level of traffic flow spatial distribution of an urban public transport
network; they found that this will be helpful for smoothening the traffic flow and alleviating traffic
congestion [5]. Zhang et al. found that bike-sharing systems have varying degrees of success based
on the empirical study of five Chinese cities. The configurations which seem the most sustainable
consider and integrate elements relating to transport planning, system design and choice of business
model. PBSP, as a Product Service System, needs to be carefully developed to appreciate the quality
and timely interplay between the physical design of the system and the provision of services being
offered [6].
The first PBSP emerged in Beijing in 2005 when some touring-related firms started the bicycle
rental operation to meet the needs of tourists, especially the overseas visitors who want to rent a
bicycle to travel around Beijing. During the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the public bicycle rental
market reached a peak. However, after one year, the public bicycle rental market encountered many
problems. Some companies declared bankruptcy and were closed, others closed dozens of bicycle
stations to reduce the operational costs. Some researchers summarized five reasons of failure of the
first generation of PBSP in Beijing: unreasonable distribution of bicycle stations, lack of safety for
cyclists, deteriorated conditions of public bicycle equipment, unattractive fare and inexplicit policy
orientation [7].
One of the barriers that still hindered the traditional bike sharing services was the difficulty of
access to docking stations [8]. Learning from the experience of PBSP, a successful dockless bike-sharing
program may integrate the functions of docking stations directly into the shared bikes. In 2015,
two start-up companies, Ofo and Mobike, initiated an innovative generation of fully Dockless Bike
Sharing Scheme (DBSS) in China [9]. In mid-2017, the total amount of venture capital for the bicycle
industry in China reached USD 2 billion, and more than 40 bike-sharing companies have been
established, which makes the market tempting but fierce [10].
This new generation of bike sharing schemes is different from the traditional public bike system
since it is easily accessible, flexible and cheap (Table 1). Before the existence of the DBSS, bikes needed
to be docked at stations, whereas in the DBSS, bikes can be un-locked and paid for using a smartphone
and can be picked up and left any parking area at users’ convenience [11]. The DBSS becomes prevalent
in the context of the boom in sharing economy, the wide use of smartphones, mobile Internet and
online payment. Bike use dramatically increased within the recent years, when private companies
started to combine digital technologies with sharing economy concepts. In July 2017, the total number
of domestic shared bikes reached CNY 16 million, and the daily ride transaction of shared bikes
reached CNY 50 million across China. The rapid development of the DBSS has created 100,000 new
jobs in China [12].
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Table 1. The comparison between the Dockless Bike Sharing Scheme (DBSS) and the Public Bike
Sharing Program (PBSP).
Characteristics Dockless Bike Sharing Scheme (DBSS) Public Bike Sharing Program (PBSP)
Dock station Dockless Fixed docking stations
Location Anywhere and can be found via apps Near subway stations, bus stops and intersections
Usage Scan the QR code with smartphone to unlock Get a bicycle-rental card to unlock
Reservation Can be reserved for 15 min Cannot be reserved
Price CNY 0.5~1 for 30 min Usually free for the first 1 or 2 h
Deposit Deposit can be returned anytime on apps Refund deposit at the rental service branches
The DBSS has led a trend of ‘green travel’ in China. Based on the research, bike sharing in
Shanghai saved 8358 t of petrol and decreased CO2 emissions by 25,240 t in 2016 [11]. It seems that
DBSS could significantly help China to achieve the declared goal in the Paris Convention of reducing
the CO2 emissions by 60–65% per GDP before 2030 [13]. On the other hand, DBSS with its great
advantages of flexibility in short trips is just the one to deal with commuters’ ‘first mile/last mile’
problem—the movement of people from a transportation hub to a final destination of the home or office.
This new integrated transportation mode, namely the ‘bike + bus/metro + bike’ trip, has improved the
efficiency of the traditional single type of vehicle mode.
The new generation of bike sharing services without docking stations is currently revolutionizing
the traditional bike-sharing market as it dramatically expands in China and even around the world.
However, many cities are not ready to welcome the mass of rubber and aluminum from blocking
pedestrian walkways and piling up in the public space [14]. Though the DBSS is a fairly new trend,
the concerns about the popularity, the benefits and potential harm behind it has prompted a hot debate
among the public as well as the academic circle. However, there is still a gap between the descriptions
of phenomenon and the assessment of the practice. It thus raises a pressing question—does DBSS,
this new scheme, really help cities to move towards a more sustainable mobility mode?
In addition to the societal relevance, this study also has a scientific relevance. Firstly, although a
range of empirical studies have already reported a wide variety of findings on bike sharing, it has often
been argued that there are distinctive inconsistencies across studies due to study design limitation,
measurement bias and cross-country variations. Particularly, a majority of research is drawn from the
European and American cities, while very little research has been concentrated in Chinese cases with a
rapid growth of PBSS [15]. To fill the gap in context-specific research, this paper takes Beijing as a case
to investigate the bike sharing development in China. Secondly, there is a growing literature on the
earlier breed of docked bike sharing schemes, there are very few critical academic studies of this new
dockless bike sharing scheme [16]. This research seeks to contribute to social scientific debates on the
new DBSS and its impacts. Thirdly, there is a lack of theoretical scientific knowledge and methods in
existing research on DBSS. The current study of DBSS mostly uses the data provided by the operation
companies, which include the basic bikes’ and users’ information plus GPS information about the
route and parking place [11,17,18]. They normally focus more on the macroscopic usage of DBSS by
big data mining and ArcGIS analysis. For example, Zhang and Mi discuss the environmental benefits
from a spatiotemporal perspective, quantitatively evaluate environmental benefits of bike sharing
using a large-scale bike-sharing dataset provided by the company Mobike, and estimate the impacts of
bike sharing on energy use, carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and nitrogen oxide (NOx ) emissions in Shanghai in
2016 [11]; Pan et al. conduct extensive experiments for hierarchical reinforcement pricing based on a
real dataset from Mobike to propose a deep reinforcement learning framework for incentivizing users
to rebalance dockless bike sharing systems [17]; Chang et al. take Beijing as a case study and present
a framework design of the Faulty Bike-Sharing Recycling Problem optimization model to minimize
the total recycling costs through the K-means clustering method that is used to divide the faulty
bike-sharing into different service points [18]. Only Spinney and Lin studied the DBSS through a
qualitative and societal perspective—by exploring the social, spatial and environmental relations
produced by these new “hybrid mobiles”, they explore the extent to which these systems represent
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 68
more economically reproductive ‘transactional’ or disruptive and ‘transformational’ modalities of

sharing [16].
This study however derives from the users’ survey and is supported by experts’ interviews.
It tries to investigate people’s perception and attitudes, while at the same time exploring the behaviour
change of people’s travel mode engendered by these disruptive forms of bike sharing, and by using a
mixed quantitative and qualitative method.
From the above, the overall research aims can be summarized as below:
• To explore the reasons behind the popularity of the DBSS in China and investigate the users’
characteristics and their behaviour change and perceptions of DBSS;
• To explore and critically assess the contribution of DBSS towards sustainable mobility in
Beijing context;
• To propose recommendations for healthier DBSS development and governance in the future.
2.1. Case Study

The identification of the case to be studied is largely dependent on the researcher’s interest.
In this research, Beijing is the suitable and typical case worth studying. Beijing is suffering from
strong air pollution, which is a serious threat against the health of the residents and the environment.
Beijing, with its 21.5 million inhabitants, is one of the most crowded cities in the world, and the huge
population has exacerbated the problem. To assess the contribution of DBSS to the city’s sustainability
and analyze the potential solutions for cities to cope with the challenges of the new bike boom, a single
case study is adopted for both methodological and pragmatic reasons. First of all, Beijing was a
pioneer in the new bike-sharing approach—by September 2017, there were 15 Shared bike bicycle
enterprises, which comprised 2.35 million shared bikes. In addition, the two biggest operators, Ofo and
Mobike, both chose to locate their headquarters in Beijing [14]. On the other hand, in September
2017, the Beijing Municipality just announced a new regulation to encourage the development of a
standardized bicycle sharing system, to implement the holistic governance and control of the DBSS
providers, and to keep a dynamic balance on the quantity of shared bikes that have been put into
the market.
2.2. Data Collection and Analysis

In this study, the data is generally from three main sources: documentation, survey, and interview.
To achieve the research aims, different methods are used to collect the targeted data (Table 2).
The analysis in this study is based on the primary data gathered from survey, interview and
secondary data from other documentation. Analysis of survey data tends to be through the use of a
computer utilizing a number of statistical analysis software packages. In this case, SPSS is used for
descriptive, analytical and contextual analysis. The in-depth interviews were digitally recorded and
fully transcribed. Afterward, the analysis of the transcripts involved three stages: familiarization,
thematic analysis, and interpretations. All the data enrolled the triangulation to verify the validity
and reliability.
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Table 2. Targeted data and collecting methods.
Data from Survey

Users’ Characteristics Travel Characteristics Ride Characteristics Users’ Attitude
• Age • Commuting time • Frequency of usage • Satisfaction of bikes,
• Gender • Commuting distance • Travel purpose infrastructures,
• Income • Transport preference • Travel length parking, safety,
• Education before and after the • Travel time • Influence on life
• Occupation using DBSS • Reasons for using and city
...... ...... ...... ......
Data from Documentation and Interview
Companies’ Data and Interview with Interview with

Interview with Planners Community Worker Bike Hunter
Documentation
• GPS location
• The sustainability of • The influence of • The operation and
DBSS towards city DBSS organization of the
• Travel route
• The impacts of DBSS on community bike hunters’ group
• Travel mileage
towards city • The responsibility • Daily job
• Recycling
• The potential of community and self-reflection
and repairing
coordinating way • The coordination • The difficulties
• Policies and reports
with other parties and solution
......
...... ...... ......
2.2.1. Survey
The survey in this study has four parts, and the full Internet survey is used to gather data.
Firstly, the classification questions, namely the ‘personal’ section of the survey. Demographic information
such as age, gender, income, education and occupation are collected in the beginning of the survey.
Secondly, the survey asks respondents lifestyle and travel characteristics, for example the commuting
time and distance, the transportation they choose for commuting, chores and entertainment. In this
part, people need to answer the transportation mode they normally choose before the DBSS appeared
and after to evaluate the behaviour change. Thirdly, the data of ride characteristics are collected,
including the trip purpose, frequency, length and other related figures when people use the DBSS.
Finally, the attitude scale form helps to assess the opinion and perception of users towards DBSS.
There are also several open questions in the last part to give respondents greater freedom to answer in
a way that suits their interpretation.
This study uses a non-probability sample, because the statistical accuracy may be less of a concern
than being ‘fir for purpose’. Purposeful sampling occurs where a selection is made according to
a known characteristic, in this case—the Beijing citizens who regularly use the DBSS. Whilst the
population in Beijing and the DBSS users are widely distributed, snowball sampling and convenience
sampling are also helpful when obtaining substantial survey data. As for the sample size, in order
to be able to measure differences or variability in the sample and to use these findings as estimates
of the population, 260 samples are selected in this research. The number is calculated by the online
sample size calculator, with the confidence level of 95% and confidence interval 6%. A population of
11,000,000 is cited by the registered DBSS users in Beijing in August 2017 [19]. The overall background
range of samples is comprehensive and balanced, however the number is relatively small compared to
the residents in Beijing, which might cause some bias of the research outcome.
Due to the limited time and budget, this study uses an online survey to collect data on DBSS
users. There is a pilot survey phase before the formal distribution. Once the survey design was
completed and prior to distribution to the sampling frame, a pilot study was undertaken on 15 people.
The time-span of respondent recruitment is 2 weeks. In this study, once the recruitment postings
had been made, the survey administration and recording of responses was self-running. The DBSS
requires smartphone and online payment for operation, thus nearly all the users are smartphone
holders, which means they could receive the link of the online survey by smartphone. Considering the
above reasons, the survey is posted in the social media groups, and public pages, thus people who
are interested in the topic, and satisfy the filter criteria of purposeful sampling could fill in the form
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 68
whenever and wherever it is convenient. However, since the sample size is relatively small and the
time-span is relatively short, the outcome may have some negative bias.
2.2.2. Documentation
In this study, both official documents and private documents are reviewed. The documentation in
this research is from media and news reports relating to the growth, investment and impacts of DBSS
in Beijing and China more broadly. For example, Mobike, one of the major companies that provides
DBSS service, together with some academic institutions, has published certain reports that include a
lot of useful information and users’ travel data. Policies, government guidelines, as well as the data
about infrastructures and transportation are collected from the government’s yearbook and official
website. For example, the various guidelines both from national government and Beijing municipality
are carefully reviewed [20–24]; Meanwhile, the White Papers published by the Mobike company also
contributed to this research [25,26].
2.2.3. Interview
To ensure the authenticity and availability of the information, two planners (experts in
transportation), one local community worker from subdistrict office and one Mobike Hunter from
the—Mobike Hunter’s Volunteer Network agreed to participate in the semi-structured interview.
The participants were asked about the problems they faced with cycling and development of the
dockless bike sharing system in the city (see Table 2). Planners and community worker interviews are
about their insights on the DBSS and its impact on the city’s sustainable development and the potential
approach for cities to cooperate with this new trend. The interview of Mobike Hunter is related to
the research potential for solving the problems that DBSS has brought. Unfortunately, the operation
companies refused to participate in the research, which means the perspectives from the market
are missing.
2.3. Ethical Considerations

The topic of this thesis related to people’s behaviour and attitudes, which did not involve any
illegal behaviour. Ethical issues are carefully considered in this thesis. As regards the recruitment
procedures, the target group in this project did not include any vulnerable groups. The project was
spread by social media and conducted online. Meanwhile, all the interviewees who participated in
the survey were asked for permission to conduct the interview and questionnaires. Besides this, all
respondents were informed that they can withdraw from the study at any time and that the survey
is entirely anonymous. The participation is voluntary and the data will only be used in this thesis.
No observation was conducted. There was no potential risk for any respondent, neither physical
nor psychological.
3. Results
3.1. Findings from the Survey

A total number of 260 survey respondents have been selected. Women and men are equally
represented. Fifty-two percent of the participants are young (18–30), 48% are middle-aged (30–60)
and there are very few senior participants (60+). The result implied that the DBSS users are popular
in all age groups, particularly the active younger groups. Meanwhile, the majority of respondents
had an academic background (75% had a bachelor’s degree or above). Referring to the average
monthly income in Beijing, which is CNY 7706 based on the Beijing Municipal Human Resources and
Social Security Bureau, the participants were situated among various income levels apart from the
no income group (15%); 44% had lower than the average wages, and 41% had higher wages than the
Beijing average monthly income. As for the occupation, most of them are students or staff in public
institutions or enterprises and professional workers who do not do too much manual labour. As for
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 68
the participants’ commuting figures, it can be observed that half of the participants commute under
40 min per day, and 58% commute less than 10 km (see Figure 1).
The survey shows that 38% users are frequent users of DBSS, and only 14% of participants never
use the DBSS. People choose DBSS most because of its convenient and time-saving characteristics.
For these non-users, however, their reasons to refuse the DBSS are mostly about their daily needs:
to deposit money and to retain private information.
In most circumstances, the shared bikes are used for a short time and distance interval.
Sixty percent of respondents finish their trip in less than 10 min and 91% in approximately 20 min.
Two thirds of users use DBBS for 1–3 km distances. This means that the majority of the users use
DBSS for their last mile of travel. The most common cycling time is 7:00–9:00 and 17:00–19:00 for
commuting which equals to the rush hour in Beijing. Two thirds of trips are for commuting and one
third is for leisure and everyday chores. It is also revealed that hybrid transportation modes were
popular. Nearly half of the users always transfer to other modes of public transportation such as the
metro (89%) and bus (54%).
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Figure 1. Commuting time and distance of participants.
3.1.1. How Does the DBSS Change People’s Lives?

In the survey, people are asked to choose their transportation mode in the city for different
purposes before and after the DBSS appeared. From Figure 2 below, we could find that the change of
car-use and motorbike-use is not significant before and after the DBSS appeared. The usage of bikes as
the mode of transportation for commuting purposes is doubled; meanwhile walking and the usage of
public transport have slightly declined. The transportation mode change of chore purpose trip and
entertainment purpose trip are similar to the commute purpose, which has the same increase in terms
of bike use (more than doubled).
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 68
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Figure 2. Transportation preference before/after the DBSS for commuting purposes.
‘The cost of bike sharing is much lower than either buying a bicycle or taking the bus or taxi. It is
more economical for me to share the bicycle, and at the same time, it is also beneficial to reduce the risk
of it being stolen.’ (Participant A, reflected from the survey)
However, most users indeed agree that the DBSS has changed their life (66%). Changes are
reflected in the following aspects. Forty-four percent of users agree that the DBSS has extended
their travel distance range, and users agree that the DBSS has reduced the time restriction (57%) and
saved the travel time (76%) for going out. At the same time, 58% think the DBSS has reduced their
travel budget.
3.1.2. Users’ Satisfaction with DBSS in Different Aspects

Though the general satisfaction is relatively good (Figure 3), the DBSS companies need to pay
more attention to the quality of the bikes since 30% of users express low or very low satisfaction about
it. As for the factors that lead to dissatisfaction, 45% of users choose the ‘pedals or the chain does not
work properly’, 35% blame the ‘unsuitable seat’, 35% reflect that ‘the handle bar or the break doesn’t
work properly’. The channels for reporting the errors also need to be improved. Because over 63%
respondents always see the broken or wrongly-parked shared bikes on the street, only 22% choose to
report the error every time. Parking is another severe problem with which users are not satisfied.
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WĂƌƚŝĐŝƉĂŶƚƐΖ ƐĂƚŝƐĨĂĐƚŝŽŶǁŝƚŚƚŚĞ^^ŝŶĚŝĨĨĞƌĞŶƚĂƐƉĞĐƚƐ
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ŝƐƚƌŝďƵƚŝŽŶ ϳ͘ϱϵй ϯϳ͘ϵϱй ϰϲ͘ϴϴй ϱ͘ϴϬй
WĂƌŬŝŶŐƉůĂĐĞ ϭϯ͘ϯϵй ϰϱ͘ϱϰй ϯϯ͘Ϭϰй ϯ͘ϱϳй
ƉƉĞǆƉĞƌŝĞŶĐĞ ϰ͘ϵϭй ϯϳ͘Ϭϱй ϰϴ͘ϲϲй ϴ͘ϵϯй
ZĞƉŽƌƚŽĨĞƌƌŽƌ ϭϲ͘Ϭϳй ϰϬ͘ϭϴй ϯϯ͘ϵϯй ϲ͘ϳϬй
Ϭй ϭϬй ϮϬй ϯϬй ϰϬй ϱϬй ϲϬй ϳϬй ϴϬй ϵϬй ϭϬϬй
sĞƌǇůŽǁ >Žǁ EĞƵƚƌĂů ,ŝŐŚ sĞƌǇŚŝŐŚ
Figure 3. Participants’ satisfaction with the DBSS in different aspects.
3.1.3. Users Perceptions towards DBSS in Different Aspects

‘For. . . short-distance travel, the advantages of shared bikes are the flexibility and speed. Compared to
driving or taking a taxi or bus in. . . rush hour in. . . large- and medium-sized cities, riding a shared
bike could apparently save you time.’ (Participant B, reflected from the survey)
‘I don’t need to look around for a parking place while finally arriving at my destination, because these
bikes are “floating” without any dock. And I can always ride a bike when I’m too tired to walk while
enjoying the street views at the same time.’ (Participant C, reflected from the survey)
Before the DBSS, 52% of users thought the previous transportation could fulfil their needs, while
after the launch of the DBSS, the number increased to 70%. Nevertheless, only 44% of users indicate
that the bicycle lanes in Beijing could fulfil their needs, and for bicycle parking lots the number is even
lower (40%). Sixty-four percent of users call for a special parking place for shared bikes, and the hottest
spots they mentioned are around metro/bus stops, neighbourhoods, office buildings and shopping
malls. People are overall optimistic in that more than 90% of participants think the DBSS helps to
solve the ‘last mile’ problem; 65% agree it helps to improve the environment; 64% agree it mitigates
the traffic congestion of the city.
3.2. The Contribution of DBSS towards Sustainable Mobility in Beijing
3.2.1. Environmental Impact

As reviewed in previous research studies, bicycles have their own advantages, especially in regard
to their environmentally-friendly characteristics [26]. Therefore, as it stands, the DBSS should have
helped with the improvement of the urban environment. However, the results of the survey and
interviews raised some doubts about this assumption.
First of all, many people considered that the DBBS increased the cycling rate in the city
and that it seems reasonable that fuel consumption and greenhouse emission have been reduced.
Meanwhile, the DBSS companies also claimed that the DBSS has made great efforts in saving energy,
reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving the urban space [25].
‘I helped the Mobike to conduct the research on Mobike White Paper. However, the company used their
own conversion method and their users’ data to write the Mobike White Paper. They simply replaced the
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riding mileage with the driving mileage, and advertise how they contribute to the environment based on
this figure (see Figure 4). This calculation is not scientific and reliable at all. . . because the hypothesis
that people change their transport from car to shared bikes is not always truthful.’ (Mr. Wang, Planner)
Figure 4. The statistics of bike sharing and its equitation to resource and environment data in Mobike
White Paper [25].
The evidence can also be found from the survey—the results did not show that the residents
replaced cars with bikes. From Figure 2, we could find that the change of car-use and motorbike-use was
not significant before and after the DBSS appeared. The usage of bikes as the mode of transportation for
commuting purposes is doubled; meanwhile, walking and the usage of public transport have slightly
declined. The transportation mode change of chore purpose trip and entertainment purpose trip are
similar to the commute purpose. This might imply that the DBSS is an additional transportation option
for citizens to use, but it is unrealistic, at least in the short term, to control the usage of cars only
by DBSS.
There is another critical voice arguing that the DBSS is not environmentally sustainable because
it is neither a ‘sharing economy’ nor a ‘circular economy’. The difference between the so-called
‘bike-sharing’ and the traditional sharing economy is that there are no spare resources in the shared
bike model. All the bicycles are bought by the DBSS companies to meet market demand, which is
different from the original intention of the sharing economy [27]. Moreover, some experts believe
that the start-ups are too busy chasing territory and investment to focus on providing a good service:
‘You see thousands of bikes parked everywhere around the city and many are not working because
nobody takes care of them—the city’s beauty has been destroyed’ [9].
‘Sometimes, government just drags away the wrongly-parked shared bikes to the shared bike. . . landfills
without any warning. And if companies want to get these bikes back to the normal market, it is
hard to negotiate with the government because of its low efficiency and high cost. Companies also
pay more attention to the quantities rather than the qualities in the initial phase, because they need
to occupy the local market and expand. . . fast. So those lack-of-care bikes become cities’ foundling.’
(Mr. Wang, Planner)
After some companies exit the market, the shared bikes they put on the street are abandoned
and cause significant resource waste and environmental pollution. Bike vandalism and theft have
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also become a recurrent issue. Vandals have often targeted the bikes, placing them on trees or even
destroying them by setting them on fire. Furthermore, currently, there is no efficient way to prevent
these criminal activities. As Spinney and Lin discussed, ‘on a conceptual level, the abandoning of
bikes anywhere on the streets is emblematic of the maximization of private utility (saving time and
effort) over collective utility (the ability of other users to easily use the public realm)’ [16].
3.2.2. Economic Viability

Generally speaking, these new bike sharing services are a more advanced innovation with a
valuable economic impact on cities’ sustainable transportation development. The DBSS has expanded
the scope of public transport services, allowing residents to choose from a wider range of lifestyles
and work areas.
In China, the new DBSS, different from the traditional public bikes, is provided entirely by the
private companies. The market gives the DBSS inherent advantages—efficiency. The DBSS compares
to the public bikes provided by local government or joint venture between the government and private
sectors, and provides a cheaper, more convenient, and more comprehensive service.
The survey result shows that 65% of the participants agree that the DBSS has changed their daily
life; 56% think the DBSS reduces the time restriction for going out, and 76% think it saves traveling time.
Meanwhile, more than half of the participants think the DBSS helps them to save on their traveling
budget. The DBSS also has the obvious advantage of easing traffic congestion. From the report of
Mobike White Paper [25], in Beijing, for trips shorter than 5 km, 92.9% of trips are quicker by shared
bike plus public transport; for trips longer than 5 km, 23.7% of trips are faster by shared bike plus
public transport.
In most cases, the DBSS is a good solution to the ‘last mile problem’ and has the significant feature
of connecting to other public transportation. In Beijing, 81% of the Mobike trips start at the bus station
and 44% of trips start near a metro station [25]. The DBSS has expanded the service scope of the
metro stations and facilitated metro services to more citizens. If we set the distance range when the
house rent is reduced to 80% as the so-called ‘new metro area’, the so-called ‘new metro area’ will
extend from 900 m around the metro station to 1650 m from the year of 2013–2015 to 2016–2017 [28].
The expansion of this service range has naturally expanded the scope of the ‘new metro area’ and
structural changes have taken place in the urban rental housing market. Furthermore, the DBSS as
a basic transport facility spatially reconstructs our urban structure, which in turn affects our lives in
more ways.
However, from the perspective of the DBSS companies, is this model economically sustainable?
As an enterprise, to put shared bikes into the market is not a purely public welfare investment, and the
final point is still for profit. In the beginning, the huge initial investment does not affect the recovery
of its cost. Just like the previous car-hailing app, with the crazy money-burning mode, these new
bike sharing apps quickly occupy the market. Most bike sharing apps require paying the deposit as a
credit/mortgage to rent the bike, which constitutes a small part of the capital return. The bike sharing
apps also bring web traffic that will attract advertisements. Moreover, the large-scale production and
technological upgrade of the shared bikes reduces the production and repair cost.
‘The companies are not about. . . sustainable transport, they are primarily about data mining. When the
companies found that they cannot manage the data, then the investment is just pull[ed] out.
The companies’ actual business model itself is not sustainable and profitable. Operators intend to
use the data to reshape the relationship between themselves and the municipality in ways that move
further away from flat and cooperative power relations to more uneven relations.’ (Mr. Spinney, planner)
From an explosive growth at the beginning of the year, to a series of bankruptcies by year’s
end, 2017 witnessed a roller coaster of China’s bike-sharing business during the ups and downs.
The industry boasted almost 60 bike-related start-ups over the last 18 months; nevertheless, by the end
of November 2017, at least six well-known bike-sharing start-ups had shut down, and more than RMB 1
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billion (USD 150 million) in deposits could not be refunded to users [29]. In the long run, with the wide
spread of the new business mode, the recovery of funds is quite substantial. Hopefully, by optimising
the cost and mining profit-points, bike sharing companies will gradually meet the profitability.
3.2.3. Social Profitability

From the social sustainability perspective, the DBSS gives residents another opportunity to go
anywhere, anytime they want to go, without thinking about the long walking distance. This increases
residents’ frequency of travel and frequency of exchanges, improving the vitality and utilisation of the
urban space. It also helps the health of the residents. The positive impact of the DBSS is to improve
the access and reduce the exclusion, but the negative impact is that the DBSS has been shown to be
relatively unequal and unsafe.
The DBSS has markedly improved the accessibility from door to door. After the introduction
of the DBSS, users reported a decline in auto-rickshaw trips of 53%. The illegal auto-rickshaw is a
common transport to deliver people from the metro station to their home. They are widely practiced
despite repeated attempts by the government to stamp them out. Just take one instance of a metro
station in Beijing, in spring 2016, just before the emergence of the DBSS: there were 200 auto-rickshaws,
drivers each completing 40+ trips and earning up to 200+ RMB per day. However, after the growth in
popularity of the DBSS, just 50–60 auto-rickshaws remain, and 70% of unlicensed drivers have changed
jobs [25].
The inequality can be found both in terms of age and income. The senior citizens are hardly
engaged in the DBSS, because the service is entirely based on the smartphone and online payment,
and many older people do not have access to these new technologies. The relationship between income
level and frequency of DBSS cycling was investigated by means of a regression test, and there was
a strong correlation between the two variables (p < 0.01). This means that no-income or low-income
groups tend to use the DBSS more frequently.
Safety is another big issue for the DBSS. Seventy-seven percent of respondents think that the
drivers do not have the concession for riders, and they feel unsafe while riding the shared bikes. At the
same time, many pedestrians also feel their walkways have been invaded by the moving or stopped
bikes. Seventy-two percent of participants agree that the parking disorder has become the eyesore of
the street and made the city messy, while 61% consider the shared bikes to take too much public space.
‘In our sub-district, most streets are Hutong, so the alleys are very narrow. If the shared bikes
are parked in the Hutong community, the streets will become even narrower. The bikes invade the
residents’ car-parking lots and walking pedestrians, and residents are angry about it. So, we have
to hire the people from the property management company to clean up the inner Hutong, move the
shared bikes into the vacant places, or at least put them in order.’ (Ms. Sun, Community worker)
There has been a major issue about the ‘right-of-way’ since the emergence of the DBSS.
Ideally, motor vehicles, non-motor vehicles, and pedestrians should go their own ways, enjoy their
respective rights in the corresponding areas, and other traffic participants should not infringe them.
However, over the years, Chinese cities’ urban planning has always placed the priority on car traffic.
As motor vehicle ownership continues to grow, non-motorized vehicles and pedestrian access are
severely squeezed. Many cyclists have negative experiences while riding the bikes. For example,
there is a lack of isolation between motorized and non-motorized lanes, resulting in vehicles often
passing by others’ lane. Due to the limited place for riding, many cyclists have to ride on the
sidewalk [30]. The mutual disrespect has led to chaos on the urban streets.
4. Discussion
The DBSS entered the public view at the end of 2016. Afterwards, it has become part of public
transportation and public facilities. Due to low technical barriers, shared bikes have experienced
savage growth in less than two years. Nevertheless, the DBSS comes with various disputes and
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queries. Nowadays, a large number of shared bikes with disorderly parking, serious damage and the
over-supply has become a new urban management issue. Some cities have already begun to issue
policy documents. However, this complicated problem still faces the challenges of refined management
and scientific decision-making.
4.1. Government: Infrastructure and Regulation

According to the statistical data from the Beijing traffic department, the number of dockless
shared bikes in Beijing soared from approximately 700,000 to 2,350,000 in four months from April
2017 to September 2017 [17]. However, problems such as disorderly parking, quality and safety have
restricted the development of the industry. The lesson is that to avoid the ‘tragedy of commons’ and
uncoordinated individualistic action in a transport network, we need the government interference [31].
The DBSS, as a ‘disruptive innovation’, does not absolve cities from the principles of sound city
planning, street design, and realising the value of public spaces.
Due to historical reasons, the Chinese-style urban space and traffic planning mode of ‘wide roads,
big blocks and sparse roads’ has been fixed [5]. Bicycles were regarded as inefficient mobility in the
past, thus the transport planning did not pay much attention to the design of the bicycle infrastructures
and facilities. However, with the rapid growth of the DBSS, the preparation of special plans for bicycles
needs to be put on the agenda as soon as possible to ensure the construction of bicycle facilities.
In the planning process, local authorities should set a clear quantitative target with the data support,
and solve the specific problems faced with focal points by stages.
On the other hand, the government also plays a vital role in investment of bike infrastructure
and supporting facilities such as bike lanes, parking lots, and bike signals to make citizens feel safe
and comfort while cycling. Bicycle infrastructure construction needs to focus more on the daily
travel environment in the city, especially cyclists’ rights, dangerous points, and end-breaking roads,
to achieve greater effectiveness.
‘Sometimes, our government is too slow to react when facing a new disruptive innovation. They are
afraid of changing, and sometimes shirk responsibility when something goes wrong. The lack of
regulation and attention caused the barbaric growth of DBSS in the beginning and caused numerous
problems that the government can no longer ignore. However, DBSS start-ups might lose their
strength due to the governments’ rough control and management. The DBSS is an insightful
reflection for the contemporary urban planning and governance in China.’ (Mr. Wang, planner)
The Chinese government issued guidelines in August 2017 by the Ministry of Transport to
regulate DBSS services, including forbidding children under the age of 12 from using the shared
bikes; operators have to buy insurance for users; customers need to register with their real name,
etc. [32]. On 15 September 2017, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport [21] released the
‘Guidance for the development of standardized sharing bicycles in Beijing (Trial)’. Based on extensive
investigations and studies and with the actual conditions in the municipality, the administrative
departments of various districts, industry associations and DBSS enterprises have formulated the
‘Technical Specifications for Bike Sharing Systems Technology and Services’ and the ‘Technology
Guidelines for Bicycle Parking Area Settings’ [23]. The policy documents provide a comprehensive,
detailed, and solid policy guarantee and normative guidance to encourage the healthy development
of the DBSS. Under new changes, the local Beijing government will order bike-sharing companies to
be regulated and supervised by municipal authorities. The firms will also be made to pay accident
insurance for users.
‘It is not enough to publish these regulations. What is more important is how to implement them and
supervise them.’ (Mr. Wang, planner)
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4.2. Companies: Maintenance and Cooperation

The DBSS companies are now facing the trouble of the vicious competition within the industry.
As for the current shared bike model, we can hardly see the improvement in bicycle utilisation efficiency.
Instead, many companies mass-produce new bicycles and put them on the market. This commercial
competition among companies is merely to expand the market and squeeze out other competitors.
It has deviated from the good intention of ‘sharing’. As a result, the number of bicycles is bound to
significantly exceed the Pareto equilibrium level [33]. It could not improve the utilisation efficiency of
social idle resources but causes a tremendous waste of resources. Recently, six out of 30+ operators
recently went bankrupt, which might be a signal of the bubble bursting. Many of China’s shared bike
users have fallen as victims of defaults on their deposit refunds, after the operators went bankrupt.
No party has claimed responsibility for refunding public deposits. From the survey, it can also be
found that 70% of respondents think the providers could not maintain the shared bikes on time and
caused an enormous waste resources.
Previously, some DBSS companies found that compared to repairing the bikes, producing new
bikes was even cheaper. For this reason, they would rather let the ‘zombie bikes’ spread on the
street and blindly produce new bikes [34]. The new guidance released in September 2017 clearly
defined the standard on the shared bike recovery and maintenance. This prompts enterprises to
regularly recondition the shared bikes and keep the shared bikes’ serviceability rate above 95%.
Shared bikes should generally be put in use for three years and then they should be updated or
scrapped; DBSS enterprises should own or rent parking spaces to meet the needs of vehicle turnover
and maintenance [21].
Beijing has also controlled the total amount of shared bikes in the city. The promulgation of this
policy precisely led enterprises to devote more energy and investment to maintenance and management
rather than manufacturing. Thus, some experts believe that if companies adjust their business focus to
the quality and maintenance of the bikes, the overall burden will not increase too much.
‘It’s good to see companies start to share their data with institutions for research purpose, because
they are valuable for transport planning. But the business model is about mining and selling the data.
So, I’d like to see more cooperation between companies and government, though I think government
should buy it. However, privacy is a big issue when using this data.’ (Mr. Spinney, planner)
On the other hand, the result revealed that there is fear of social exclusion in the current DBSS;
to include marginalised low-income groups who cannot afford smartphones, those who cannot
work with smartphones or those who even prefer not to have smartphones, the DBSS requires more
comprehensive software. New tools such as fingerprint recognition programs or urban transport cards
can help.
4.3. Citizens: Culture and Participation

Education and various activities could help to encourage good behaviour and cultivate a
cyclists-friendly environment. These can be initiated by the government, market, civil society, or a
combination of all. It is not enough to rely solely on infrastructure to enhance the attractiveness of
bicycles. Bicycles are closely linked to the social symbolic effect and the level of income. With the rise
of residents’ income levels, bicycles often embody the ‘cheapness’, which hinders the social acceptance
and popularity of bicycles. We also interviewed some non-users of the DBSS and asked them why they
rejected this service. Many of them said they did not know how to ride the bikes or that the bike is
not a need in their life. Therefore, to encourage more people to cycle and to enable the cyclists to feel
proud and satisfied as the car groups, large-scale publicity and education need to be carried out, so
as to change people’s view and make the bicycle become a part of the daily life style and the organic
component of the city image. On the other hand, to guide the safe and right cycling/driving behaviour,
and create a bike-friendly environment, schools, NGOs and local communities could help with the
supervision and education.
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For instance, the vandalism acts towards shared bikes led to the formation of a spontaneous civic
group—‘bike hunters’:
‘We use the APP GPS information to retrieve those illegal placed, abandoned, or stolen bikes.
By reporting the violations of out-of-service or damaged bikes through the APP, the bike hunters could
gain some rewards and at the same time, assist the orderly operation.’ (Mr. Zhao, Mobike Hunter)
Moreover, some shared bike operators have already set a credit system to encourage a better
behaviour by rewarding users’ credits for reporting broken or illegally parked bikes, and demerits for
correspondingly bad behaviour. If your score drops too low, your next ride could become much more
expensive [35].
‘We regard bike hunting as a treasure hunting game. We enjoy the procedure of finding the stranded
and damaged bikes, reporting them. It seems that we could contribute to the urban environment and
society in our own way. The reward from the APP is not the main reason for us. The hunters in our
volunteer groups become good friends and even become couples.’ (Mr. Zhao, Mobike Hunter)
4.4. Hybrid Governance

The national guideline put forward must adhere to the principle of multi-party governance and
give full play to the joint efforts of the government, enterprises, social organisations, and the public.
There must be coordination on three levels to achieve the continuous innovation for the DBSS [36].
• Synergy of the transportation mode
The DBSS alone itself cannot achieve the revival of bicycles. To promote the bicycles, the holistic
green traffic solution should be provided to the public through the optimization of the connection and
integration between the bicycles and various public transports.
‘Many Chinese cities have issued guidance on the regulation of shared bike services, setting up a
“black list for riding”, piloting geo-fences, planning of banned parking areas, and enforcing real-name
registrations to standardise the development of shared bikes, but with little success. Cycling brands
have responded with the introduction of their own governance, such as developing geo-fences and
artificial data platforms, etc., which have certain results in the short term. In the long run, if there is
no unified control and standard, old problems cannot be eradicated. Therefore, a unified management
governance system platform should be established to achieve accurate management of bicycle placement
and operation.’ (Mr. Wang, planner)
For example, local authorities could incorporate the infrastructure investment with private sector
companies. In the past, each DBSS company was basically independently managed and did not
communicate with other players. As a result, the number of bicycles in the parking area was excessive
and not properly divided. The establishment of a systematic DBSS management platform could enable
the unified management of different brands of shared bikes. Its back-end system platform can also
be open to all DBSS companies. In this way, shared bikes can be put into places where people gather
and flow, such as bus stations, large squares, and stations near subways. If the number of bicycles
exceeds the standard or the bikes are in short supply, they can use the backstage management system
to conduct scientific and directional and effective operation and maintenance.
• Synergy of information
It is also helpful to promote comprehensive research on multi-source multidimensional data
(open data, data sharing and public crowdsourcing data). Combining the traditional data and new
data could support the process of decision-making.
Since according to the new guideline, all shared bikes have to be equipped with the GPS chips,
the companies could share their transportation data on where people ride their bikes to, and where
they park. With the help of the empirical data, the government could make a better decision on where
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to build the new bike tracks, parking lots and public realm improvements [37]. In practice, Mobike and
the Beijing Institute of Urban Planning and Design have signed a cooperation agreement. The big
data will support the planning of Beijing’s pedestrian and bicycle lanes during the 13th Five-Year Plan
period. It will also assist with the planning of parking lots and parking spots and select and support
Beijing 3200 km bike lanes’ construction [38].
• Synergy of participants
Encourage all stakeholders including enterprises, government, the public, social organisations
and so on in the process to achieve the win-win cooperation.
‘We have different WeChat groups to discuss how to improve the dockless bike sharing system in
different cities. There are officers from the Mobike Company, experts, users, and general people who
are interested in helping with the issues in this online discussion group, so that our voices can be
heard by the company. We also submitted our opinions and suggestions to relevant departments of
city government, at the stage of releasing the trial requirements for comments. Actually, our final
goal is that, one day in the future, we won’t have any bikes to hunt.’ (Mr. Zhao, Mobike Hunter)
The participation of the public in urban DBSS management can, on the one hand, improve the
public’s awareness, quality and ability of democratic participation, self-management, and self-service;
on the other hand, it can also promote the transformation of urban government functions and ensure
the democratic and scientific public decision-making. It is conducive to the construction of a public
service-oriented government that combines the concepts of responsibility, service, and the rule of law.
In addition, the public participation in management also facilitates the implementation of government
policies and accelerates the standardisation of the DBSS [39].
5. Conclusions
5.1. Brief Summary

With the emergence of the sharing economy, the popularity of the mobile payment,
the environment awareness and the inherent market demand, the DBSS has led a trend of bicycle
revival in Beijing, which is becoming a role model for all of China. These new kind of dockless shared
bikes with great advantages in terms of flexibility during short trips are just the ones that could solve
the commuters’ ‘last mile’ problem. However, people are still worried about its safety and quality.
Considering sustainability criteria, the DBSS was expected to have positive impacts on the reduction of
greenhouse gas emission, elimination of pollution and health risks. However, the result of the survey
shows that the shared bikes are not an alternative for the frequent car-users. Nevertheless, it has also
yielded negative consequences such as blocked sidewalks and vandalism of the bikes. Oversupply has
led to graveyards of bikes, and deep concerns about quality control, maintenance, and management
of these systems. If there is no efficient way to avoid the bad treatment towards shared bikes
and abasement of public space, it may be more of a curse than a blessing. Moreover, though
the DBSS has increased the accessibility within the urban mobility framework to a great extent,
the seasonal and tidal phenomenon calls for a more efficient way to dispatch and distribute the bikes.
Furthermore, the business model of the DBSS companies seems to be not very sustainable or profitable.
The public is also worried about their quality and safety, especially the issues of ‘right of way’. How to
coordinate and solve these problems is not only related to the future direction of the DBSS, but also
related to the vital interests of the general public. Therefore, it is the general trend to emphasise that
governments, enterprises, and the public participate in multi-party cooperation and build synergic
governance networks to carry forward the advantages and avoid the negative effects of the new bike
sharing system.
The city government should improve the construction of the bicycle traffic network,
standardise the parking place setting of bicycles, and strengthen the supervision and law enforcement
of illegal activities. Operators should implement the responsibility of DBSS parking management,
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popularise and apply technologies such as geo-fencing, take comprehensive measures such as economic
rewards and punishments and credit records, and guide users to regulate parking. At the same time,
it is important to strengthen the publicity and education to guide mutual respect among drivers,
cyclists and pedestrians through public service advertisements, theme education and volunteering
activities. Users themselves are encouraged to enhance their awareness of the cycling etiquette, abide
by traffic regulations, and abide by social ethics. The three-level coordination, namely the synergy
of transportation mode, information and participants is recommended for the DBSS’s future healthy
development and efficient hybrid governance.
5.2. Limitations and Recommendations for Future Study

In this research, since surveys constitute a general method for collecting large amounts of
data, profound and comprehensive views from specific users are lacking. The online sampling
and distribution method may also cause the bias in this research. Future research may fill the gap
by conducting in-depth interviews with various background users and generate more ideas from
their perspective by qualitative methods. Moreover, though the actual performance of DBSS is being
criticised assessed in this research, there are still many issues that had not been solved prior to
evaluating the DBSS’s sustainable mobility. For instance, directions for further studies may include
the research about the quantified index, which could measure the performance of the DBSS towards
sustainability in different cities.
In this research, only four interviewees agreed to join the research, and representatives from
companies or local authorities are excluded. So, the research lacks direct views from the government
and company perspective. Thus, more detailed operations and management advice needs to be
proposed in future research. For example: how regulations could be improved and implemented more
efficiently, how to utilise the companies’ technology and data to better shape the city, etc.
Since, this research only focuses on Beijing as the single case study, there might be other cases that
could be studied and compared to reveal the differences in DBSS’s contribution at a different city scale.
Moreover, with the expansion of DBSS companies to other parts of the world, appropriate coordination
between the local government and the private firms to avoid potential chaotic situations is required.
By observing the Chinese experience presented in this research, further studies may focus on how to
develop the DBSS in cities worldwide, as well as on researching the obstacles that the DBSS is facing
and how to solve them in different contexts. DBSS and its healthy development and governance need
more valuable investigation in future research.
Funding: This research received no external funding.

Acknowledgments: This research work is supported by Erasmus Mundus PLANET Europe program EPMC
scholarship funded by the Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the Commission of
the European Communities.
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113
Article
Producing Opportunities Together: Sharing-Based
Policy Approaches for Marginal Mobilities in Bogotá
ID
Giovanni Vecchio
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy;
giovanni.vecchio@polimi.it
Received: 1 June 2018; Accepted: 29 June 2018; Published: 2 July 2018
Abstract: Everyday mobility practices are increasingly an element of interest for urban policy, as
well as for suggesting alternative solutions to urban issues. Amongst their manifold contributions,
practices can be relevant for securing individuals’ access to places and opportunities. They can do
so by promoting services and behaviours based on resources that individuals may share between
themselves. This role could be significant especially for those settings where the traditional provision
of transport services and infrastructures is more difficult, such as in the informal settlements of
the urban South. Drawing on these assumption, this paper intends to investigate policy solutions
based on mobility practices, as a suitable way to enhance the access to urban opportunities from
informal settlements. Policy approaches focused on mobility supply and demand are explored,
addressing options such as the coproduction of mobility services and behavioural approaches based
on demand matchmaking. A possible operationalization of such approaches is explored in the
marginal informal neighbourhoods of Bogotá, considering their accessibility issues, how shared use
mobility policies may tackle them, and what features are necessary for the implementation of such
measures. The proposed policy measures emerge as suitable operational options that nonetheless
require recognition and support by the institutions responsible for urban mobility planning.
Keywords: sharing; coproduction; matchmaking; urban mobility; mobility policy; accessibility;

informality
1. Introduction
Increasingly, everyday mobility practices are an element of interest for urban policy, as well as
for suggesting alternative solutions for urban issues. Practices are here considered as the forms in
which each person shapes and uses mobility to achieve their own aims. These express new forms of
mobility and reflect the spatio-temporal transformations of contemporary societies, which involve
unprecedented territorial scales, temporal dimensions and modal choices [1]. Practices are based on
the mobilization of manifold individual resources, which each person uses to achieve specific aims:
mobility in fact is fundamental for overcoming spatial friction, accessing significant opportunities,
and taking part in valued activities [2]. Given that the mobility potentials available to each person are
different, individuals shape and appropriate mobility according to their personal characteristics and
aims [3]. Practices are thus a relevant knowledge tool to examine how individuals use the resource
of individual mobility and how collective flows affect the spatio-temporal organisation of a territory.
However, practices do not simply act as a knowledge tool, but may also contribute to the social
production of goods and services [4]. Practices could be significant also for urban mobility policy since
they make use of existing services in unforeseen ways and create innovative solutions [5] that reflect
individual mobility needs and mobilize unprecedented resources.
Within a rich debate that has extensively analysed the variegated forms, spaces and subjects of
mobility practices [6], this paper focuses on the everyday forms in which each person shapes and uses

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 54
mobility. A practice is what any person does, intentionally or not, within a structured field [7] (p. 48),
but the main thinkers who have dealt with this concept have privileged an everyday life perspective [8].
In the case of urban mobility, a practice is thus what a subject does to move, within a field structured
by material and immaterial elements (such as infrastructures or service timetables). Practices can be
recursive, that is, they can be repeatedly deployed to deal with similar needs and wants. In this sense,
these become a habitus of the individual, which can be defined as a disposition of the individual that
results from organizing actions and personal predispositions [9] (p. 206).
Focusing on recursive forms of everyday mobility, the relatively short trips occurring within
the living areas become relevant, thus excluding non-reversible movements like relocations or
migrations [10]. However, practices are not exclusively individual but may imply a collective
dimension: in case these involve individual activities whose exercise generates specific social
relationships, practices originate communities distinguished by the continuative deployment of an
activity [11]. In terms of urban mobility policy, practices are thus significant for at least three reasons.
First, they are deployed daily in urban settings, involving the spatial and temporal dimensions with
which planning and policy approaches usually deal. Second, practices involve individuals and their
“process of choice construction in contemporary societies” [12] (p. 17), a dimension that could be
nudged [13] to direct individual choices toward better collective outcomes. Third, collectivities and
their decisions may also be tackled, as the existence of communities of practices demonstrates.
Amongst the policy measures that practices could suggest, sharing-based approaches may
contribute to address urban mobility issues. In the field of mobility, sharing is usually related to
shared use mobility, that is, “travel alternatives that try to maximise the utilisation levels of the
finite mobility resources that a society can realistically afford to have by disengaging their usage
from ownership-bound limitations” [14] (p. 11). These may include services whose business model
is based on the access to (rather than ownership of) vehicles, such as bikesharing, carsharing or
ridesharing. However, the concept of shared use mobility may assume a specific meaning referring
to practices: this would refer to unprecedented initiatives in which individuals share material assets
(e.g., vehicles, money) and immaterial resources (e.g., individual skills, free time slots) between
themselves to provide needed services or to coordinate individual needs, in order to enhance the
access to places and the valued opportunities they offer. The focus on practices is in line with some
distinguishing features of shared use mobility [14] (p. 11), such as providing a wider range of mobility
choices, delivering first- and last-mile solutions to help riders connect with other forms of transport,
cutting down transportation costs for individuals and households, and even establishing an ethos of
sharing resources on an as-needed basis within communities. Furthermore, practices focus on a small
part of the extensive and sometimes ambiguous field of shared use mobility, also providing a better
representation of the shared-mobility users’ behaviour, an element required for also improving urban
transport analysis [15] (p. 408).
The interest in sharing arises from practices that, in a given territory, show recurrent individual
needs, attractive places and mobility practices: many subjects need to accomplish similar tasks but
they do so individually, even if the places to reach and the activities to realize are often the same for
different people. To develop devoted policy solutions, shared use mobility approaches can rely on
practices in two senses. First, these are knowledge tools for ongoing forms of mobilities, showing
what needs are recurring and what similar resources are mobilised by individuals. Second, these can
become policy tools, for example through behavioural approaches that address individuals’ choices,
behaviours, and their reflection on mobility practices. Practices can thus be relevant for securing
individuals’ access to places and opportunities, by promoting services and behaviours shaped by and
coordinated through communities.
Drawing on these assumption, this paper intends to investigate policy solutions based on
mobility practices, which could complement the traditional provision of mobility infrastructures
and services. As the next sections explain, the proposed discussion is limited to a specific setting
(informal settlements) and a precise mobility issue (the lack of accessibility to valued urban functions).
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Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 54
The discussion focuses on a specific setting and draws on a survey on everyday mobility practices,
to detect recurring features and emerging valuable resources for unprecedented policy measures.
This paper’s discussion considers four research questions in particular: (1) what are the recurrent needs
and latent resources highlighted by mobility practices; (2) what shared use mobility measures may
originate from practices; (3) what policy features are required to operationalise such measures; (4) what
are the opportunities and the issues that shared use mobility measures raise from an institutional
perspective? In doing so, the expected outcome is a policy framework, which considers how practices
may be treated as knowledge and policy tools in the various stages of a policymaking cycle. Even if
the findings will be place-specific, the paper intends to contribute to further research and practice
on shared use mobility policy, by offering a framework that may be adopted when approaching
other settings.
While shared use mobility measures based on practices are increasingly considered in relation to
many settings and mobility issues [16], this paper focuses on informal settlements and the improvement
of the accessibility available to them. Increasingly, mobility planning and policy are distancing
themselves from the simple provision of infrastructures and services [17,18], and this change of
paradigm is even more significant for the marginal areas of the urban South. These areas in fact suffer
historically from scarce access to urban opportunities, due to their spatial distribution (a matter of
land use planning) and a scarce availability of transport connections (an issue of mobility planning).
Furthermore, their unplanned origin and the features of the urban fabric impede the possibility of
simply providing public transport services or road infrastructures. Nonetheless, the issues of access in
informal settlements are crucial to fighting against the prevailing poverty of their inhabitants [19] or
the high rates of urban criminality [20] (p. 77), as well as to promote a more democratic participation
in urban life [21] (p. 1). Amongst the approaches that may enhance access to urban opportunities
from informal settlements in the urban South, behavioural approaches (based on mobility demand)
and service coproduction (based on mobility supply) are explored. On the one hand, behavioural
measures address mobility demand and allow the possibility of considering individuals’ preferences
and needs as reflected in their travel choices, making practices themselves a policy tool [5]. On the
other hand, coproduction addresses transport supply and offers an alternative way of providing
mobility services, which also proves to be more viable when the available financial resources are
scarce [22]. The discussion of this paper draws specifically on research on urban mobility and
individual capabilities led in Bogotá: the city was chosen due to its celebrated public transport
strategies, which aimed at improving access to the city for all but were only partially able to do so for
the huge marginal areas of the city [23–25].
Moving from these assumptions, the discussion of the paper is structured as follows. First,
a short theoretical discussion considers why urban mobility planning should secure access to urban
opportunities and examines significant shared use mobility approaches addressing both supply and
demand (Section 2). Then, a possible operationalization of such an approach is explored in the setting of
Bogotá, focusing on marginal informal neighbourhoods and drawing on a qualitative survey involving
local inhabitants. Section 3 succinctly explains why the case of Bogotá is interesting and describes the
adopted methodology. The proposed approach is then discussed referring to three stages of a policy
making cycle [26] (p. 210):
• problem setting: defining which areas are more in need of interventions that improve their access
to urban opportunities and what mobility practices are already in place (Section 4);
• policy design: defining how behavioural and coproduction initiatives may be articulated in these
settings (Section 5);
• policy implementation: discussing the conditions for realizing such initiatives and considering the
necessary interactions with the current mobility policies of a city (Section 6).
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2. Toward Sharing-Based Policies for Urban Accessibility: Service Coproduction and Demand
Matchmaking
Sharing-based practices can contribute to improving access to urban opportunities through
interventions adoptable in a short temporal term. Accessibility in fact is emerging as a priority for
mobility planning and policy, being crucial for the achievement of opportunities that are decisive
for individuals’ wellbeing and quality of life [27]. However, accessibility is primarily defined by
the interplay of consolidated features such as land use and transport systems, which define where
people live, where opportunities are located, and what forms of mobility are available to make
them interact [28]. Insufficient access may be addressed with long-term actions, providing new
infrastructures or intervening on land-use. However, in adopting a shorter temporal threshold, other
courses of action may also improve the access to opportunities. Three options would be available in
this sense: enhancing the usability of existing connections to existing opportunities, providing closer
opportunities, and introducing new services to reach existing opportunities. In relation to the latter,
new forms of intervention on both mobility offer supply and demand may be relevant.
Two options emerge as suitable operational avenues, to be further explored: the coproduction
of mobility services may address the lack of required connections, while a suitable operational
take on mobility demands is conveyed by matchmaking and behavioural approaches to mobility.
The coproduction of services and the matchmaking of needs act complementarily: coproduction
addresses the side of supply, while matchmaking and behavioural approaches deal with the demand side.
Sharing is a condition that makes both options necessary and feasible. On the one hand, coproduced
services may be promoted by different kinds of resources brought together by individuals who live in
the same area and experience similar mobility issues. On the other hand, matchmaking relies on similar
needs expressed by individuals who may share their own practices for enhancing the achievement of
valued opportunities. The following sections briefly introduce coproduction and matchmaking.
2.1. Producing New Opportunities: The Coproduction of Services

Coproduction refers to “the process through which inputs used to produce a good or service
are contributed by individuals who are not ‘in’ the same organization” [29] (p. 1073). In settings
characterised by the absence of needed services and scarce available resources to provide them,
alternative forms of provision could be significant. In fact, coproduction approaches provide several
advantages when compared to traditional forms of service provisions, but their main contribution is
probably the focus on individuals and the value they may bring in the production processes. In fact,
“the central idea in co-production is that people who use services are hidden resources, not drains on the
system, and that no service that ignores this resource can be efficient” [30] (p. 11). The value provided
by individuals consists of the manifold resources they may share for coproducing services, from
monetary resources to the human resources necessary for running a service. In the field of mobility,
coproduced initiatives may involve public transport services designed, financed (at least partially)
and sometimes even run by individuals [30]. Coproduction may even involve private car sharing
initiatives made possible by different vehicle owners who bring together their own vehicles [31].
The involvement of people better conveys individual needs and includes the eventual resources,
both material and immaterial, available to them. In this way, equivalent services—i.e., services that
meet the same goals, but in a more efficient way [32]—can be provided with alternative production
processes, or informal services may be included within regular public transport networks [33]. These
processes can also overcome those governance and logistical limitations that may impede the effective
delivery of services, due to complex environments or lacking resources [31]. However, bottom-up
initiatives and local involvement imply that these subjects should help themselves create those
services that other citizens already receive in traditional ways, “dissolving any expectation that
the contract between state and society should extend to the poor, now in any case reconfigured as
the resourceful” [34] (p. 484) (see also [35] for a brief review of critical voices). Therefore, it becomes
crucial that coproduction approaches are proposed and evaluated according to the real improvement
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they can provide to overall accessibility and individual opportunities, avoiding bottom-up solutions
that are not beneficial.
2.2. Matching Existing Needs: A Behavioural Approach to Urban Mobility

Matchmaking refers to the possibility of helping two or more categories of customers find each
other and engage in mutually beneficial interactions [36]. These matches could be favoured by
addressing the behavioural aspects that define individual choices and defining different mobility
profiles [37–40]. Forms of matchmaking drawing on behavioural elements could also be significant in
settings where services are currently missing and could be the result of devoted coproduction initiatives.
Behavioural elements would in fact work on the motivations that may facilitate the individuals’
engagement in such measures: for example, engaging in a fulfilling activity [41], appreciating
cooperation with others [42], and being involved in an activity useful for one’s own and collective
purposes [43]. Matchmaking examples may include private ridesharing circuits, involving neighbours
or colleagues heading to nearby destinations. Another example is that of time banks, definable as
time-based exchange systems between individuals accomplishing tasks on behalf of someone else.
However, behavioural approaches are subject to criticism, due to elements that may affect their
effectiveness and relevance. First, behaviour-based approaches must deal with established habits, one
of the main barriers for the promotion of alternative choices [44,45]. Moreover, behavioural measures
may simply conceptualize citizens as passive users or consumers, rather than focusing on their
self-realization as human beings: these approaches lean toward ‘forced choices’ assuming “the idea
that rational maximization is what people should do” [46] (p. 23). This is an aspect particularly critical
in urban South contexts where it may be assumed that “it is the behavioural weakness of the poor that
has to be corrected” [47] (p. 580).
3. Methodology
3.1. The Setting

This paper bases its discussion on the setting of Bogotá (Colombia). The city has promoted
significant public transport infrastructural investments inspired by an explicit social commitment,
intending to address its significant social imbalances. Bogotá in fact has grown disorderly in the
last decades and nowadays hosts approximately 8 million inhabitants; their distribution is strongly
imbalanced, since the huge informal settlements in the southern areas of the city are those with the
highest residential densities and the worst socio-economic conditions. The public transport strategy of
Bogotá dates almost two decades, since its most significant intervention—a bus rapid transit system
called TransMilenio—started its operations in the year 2000. The buses serve some of the main road
corridors of the city, offering a fast service accessible to approximately half of the city inhabitants [25].
An effective and relatively economical measure that brought significant improvements to the mobility
of Bogotá, TransMilenio, has been praised and imitated worldwide [48]. However, the contribution
of this public transport system to the improvement of social inclusion has been partial, especially for
marginal areas and the worst-off populations. Such issues have been highlighted by analyses referring
to the accessibility that the city transport system provides to relevant urban opportunities [22,23].
Analyses that define what areas suffer from scarce levels of accessibility are context-dependent,
since according to the examined setting the opportunities that “are assumed to be necessary to
prevent households from social exclusion” [49] (p. 482), the prevailing modal choices, and the distance
thresholds that determine what opportunities are available or not are different. In the research on which
this paper draws, accessibility to job opportunities by public transport was estimated by assuming
travel time thresholds of 30 and 60 min (see [50] for an in-depth description of the methodology).
Drawing on these analyses, areas suffering from scarce levels of accessibility were defined, including
a significant share of the city’s marginal settlements. Amongst them, two areas in the southern part
of Bogotá were chosen for a deeper analysis (see Figure 1): the neighbourhoods of La Merced del
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Sur and La Torre. In the perspective assumed by the paper, these areas are relevant for their low
socioeconomic conditions and their poor performances in terms of accessibility to urban opportunities.
It must be noted that these areas were chosen also due to the availability of local contacts (and the
consequent possibility to reach these areas and interact with their inhabitants). Both neighbourhoods
are in mountainous areas and occupy an unfavourable position in relation to the job opportunities of
the city (see Figure 2), but their locations and the available public transport services define a different
time geography of access for the two neighbourhoods (see Figure 3).
Figure 1. Position of the two examined neighbourhoods (source: [50]).
Figure 2. Job opportunities in Bogotá (source: [25]).
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Figure 3. Travel time by public transport for the two examined neighbourhoods (source: [50]).
La Merced del Sur is in the southern part of Bogotá and was established between the Forties
and the Fifties, when immigrants from other regions of Colombia arrived, attracted by the presence
of productive activities such as mines and furnaces. Today the neighbourhood is a consolidated
settlement, with two or three-story houses, but it still lacks paved streets, and it hosts prevalently
low-income inhabitants. As part of the consolidated informal city, the neighbourhood does not suffer
from severe forms of isolation from the rest of the city, but it lacks any form of formal or informal public
transport. La Torre instead is located at the southern margin of Bogotá and was recently originated
by the arrival of refugees from other Colombian regions, fleeing the violent civil war. Its expansion
continues every year, so that the steep and unpaved streets of the neighbourhood pass by consolidated
brick houses and new born shacks built with recycled objects. The socioeconomic conditions of its
population are amongst the worse in the city. However, the very position of the neighbourhood is a
perfect summary of what it means to be marginal in the city: the settlement is in an elevated position,
has no public transport service, and can only be reached by climbing a long stairway or using an
informal transfer.
3.2. Data Collection

In the chosen areas, an interview-based qualitative survey was led to detect what opportunities
people value, where and when these activities occur, and what mobility practices are deployed to
achieve them. Thanks to the help of two local charities, ten subjects in each neighbourhood were
involved. These were mainly inhabitants (8 in La Torre, 9 in La Merced del Sur) with the additional
presence of social workers (2 in la Torre, 1 in La Merced del Sur); the interviews, which lasted on
average half an hour, were anonymised, audio recorded, transcribed in Spanish and then translated
in English. The interviews were collected during working hours, so that the sample does not reflect
exactly the social composition of the two neighbourhoods. The focus on two specific settlements
allowed the involvement of a relatively small number of interviewees, which was assumed to be
sufficient to grasp the constitutive features of the everyday mobilities and opportunities experienced
in these areas. Microstories were collected through semi-structured interviews, realized between
September 2016 and January 2017, in individual conversations with the interviewees. The interviews
revolved around three elements: 1. subjects (conveying their social, economic, gender and age features;
six questions); 2. valued activities (classifying them according to activity typology and frequency; two
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questions, repeated for each activity) and places (where activities occur; two questions, repeated for
each activity); and 3. mobility practices (what mobility practices are necessary to reach places, and
what are their features—in terms of modal option, services, travel times and costs; eleven questions,
repeated for each activity).
3.3. Thematic Analysis of Data

Thematic analysis was used to examine the data previously collected. The data were originally
collected as part of research on urban mobility and individual capabilities in Bogotá. While interviews
were transcribed, the answers related to valued activities and places were also mapped. Following the
framework from [51], the features of the analysis can be summarised as follows:
• a realist method, “which reports experiences, meanings and the reality of participants” [51] (p. 81),
was used to grasp the everyday mobility experiences of inhabitants;
• codes for analysing data were defined in view of four issues: destinations, activities pursued
there, frequencies of the trips to the destination, and modal choices (for example, codes for modal
choices included walking, going by public transport, going by informal transport, bicycling, going
by car, and going by motorbike);
• themes were detected in view of the places mentioned by at least two people.
Given the initial interest in mobility and capabilities, the thematic analysis enabled a focus on
the emergence of recurrent mobility practices as a base for shared use mobility policy measures. In
fact, interviews did not explicitly refer to such feature, but rather the active role of the researcher
highlighted such recurrent patterns and considered their possible policy relevance.
4. Problem Setting: Recurring Accessibility Issues in Marginal Settlements

To deploy shared use mobility measures for enhancing accessibility, it is necessary to set the
problem to be faced by such policy. In fact, problem setting “is a process in which, interactively,
we name the things to which we will attend and frame the context in which we will attend to
them” [52] (pp. 39–40). To ‘name the things’, three elements are here necessary. First, define what
areas are suffering from scarce levels of accessibility (as shown in Section 3.1). Second, examine the
opportunities valued by local inhabitants and the mobility practices deployed to achieve them. Third,
assess if favourable conditions for shared use mobility initiatives are present.
In the chosen areas, interviewees highlight several opportunities significant for them and their
beloved ones. Apart from jobs, these mainly include activities necessary for the fulfilment of everyday
needs, such as shopping and relational activities (that is, those related to the management of the
needs of one’s closest relatives). Other relevant typologies are instead differentiated according to
the neighbourhood, with a prevalence of education-related activities in La Merced and care-related
activities in La Torre. Most respondents tended to move by public transport, despite highlighting
the scarce quality of the available services. A good explanation is provided by one respondent, who
mentioned that “the public transport is the only alternative. The only skill you need is to plan the
travel in advance, so that you can reach the hospital on time for your appointment” (D., La Torre).
Only few respondents could not afford to pay the bus fare or, on the contrary, they could move by
using private vehicles. Instead, the deriving geography of accessible areas and available opportunities
was similar (see Figure 4): while people in La Merced del Sur were able to reach a few surrounding
neighbourhoods and even some central areas, the inhabitants of La Torre mainly remained confined to
a portion of southern Bogotá.
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Figure 4. Principal areas of interaction for the neighbourhoods of La Torre (left) and La Merced del Sur
(right) (source: [50]).
From the interviews conducted in the two marginal neighbourhoods, inhabitants confirmed the
low level of accessibility available to them, highlighting features that may pave the way for shared use
mobility policy measures. In fact, most of the respondents agreed that they can reach the places they
need: as stated by one of them, “I can reach all the places I need for me and my family” (M., La Torre).
They also recognized overall mobility issues, as in the case of V. (La Merced del Sur) who stated:
“For me it is quite difficult [to move], because I only walk to the places I need; often there is no
transport, or it is too expensive for me and my children”. In particular, some common features emerge.
First, a recurrence of needs, places and mobility practices emerge: many subjects need to accomplish
similar tasks with similar frequencies, but they do so individually, even if the places to reach and the
activities to realize are often the same for different people. Such recurrence is particularly visible at the
local scale (see Figure 5), where local polarities emerge in relation to basic needs such as shopping,
care and relational activities (for example, schools attended by children or health care facilities needed
by elderly relatives). Second, a prevalence of trips by public transport emerge but respondents also
extensively mention the low quality of the existing services: the scarcity of routes, their low frequencies,
and their limited ability to reach desired places are recurrent elements in the interviews.
In relation to possible shared use mobility measures, this short insight on the two neighbourhoods
already offers some elements of interest. The interviewees express similar needs that they currently
achieve despite the poor modal alternatives available to them. However, to do so they must invest
significant personal resources, coping with huge efforts, monetary expenses, and temporal costs. As G.
(La Merced del Sur) admitted, “I can reach most of the places I need, but if transport was better (more
routes, better travel conditions), for sure I would be able to move more and do more activities in
different places”. Given that institutions in Bogotá struggle to provide infrastructures or services in
traditional forms [25] (pp. 11–12), shared use mobility measures could prove a viable alternative for
enhancing the accessibility available in marginal areas.
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Figure 5. Locations and typologies of the activities at the neighbourhood scale, as mentioned in the
interviews (source: [50]).
5. Policy Design: Operationalizing Coproduction and Matchmaking

The individual needs and the mobility issues highlighted in the previous section can contribute
to the design of shared use mobility policy measures, in relation to both demand and supply. Policy
design in fact is directed to define policy instruments and implementation tools for solving the problem
previously set. The features of these interventions, the evaluation of their benefits and costs, and a
realistic assessment of their feasibility are here discussed.
If the available modal choices remain unaltered, matchmaking provides a first operational option.
In fact, inhabitants undertake recurrent activities in the same locations and with similar frequencies,
suggesting the coordination of their mobility needs. As shown in Figure 5, some local polarities emerge:
for La Merced del Sur, the area of Molinos (a commercial polarity near a TransMilenio station, along
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the trafficked Avenida Caracas); for La Torre, the areas of Paraiso (for shopping reasons), Lucero Bajo
(with commercial and care activities, in a dense neighbourhood) and Meissen (attractive because of
schools and a hospital). Some recurring activities may be accomplished by a smaller number of subjects
acting on behalf of a larger number of inhabitants, establishing for example a time bank (the author
discussed the proposal with a local charity, which confirmed the suitability of such an initiative).
Figure 6 provides a representation of how this initiative may work, assuming of course the presence of
effective forms of coordination between the needs and the practices of different subjects. F. (La Torre)
mentioned that some subjects need the contribution of other people to achieve some tasks: “I agree
with my daughter who has the experience of travelling with an elderly and with children. If you
are with these people, or if you must carry the food you just bought, travel can be very unpleasant.
Moreover, you also have long travel times as well as waiting times”. Such shared accomplishment
of significant tasks may nonetheless prove to be insufficient for improving the available access to
valued opportunities, for which new mobility services could be significant. These may be the result of
coproduction initiatives, in which inhabitants share resources of their own (be they economic, human
or other) to provide a service that is currently absent.
Figure 6. A suitable matchmaking example: Functioning of a local time bank for the La Torre
neighbourhood (source: [50]).
Coproduction and matchmaking may contribute to the achievement of similar aims. Considering,
for example, the inhabitants of La Torre going to the Paraiso neighbourhood for their shopping
(as shown in Figure 5), most inhabitants currently walk to the area on a weekly basis, while going
back with an informal bus if they need to carry heavy items. They may first establish a matchmaking
mechanism, so that only a few of them would be responsible for groceries. Others instead would
accomplish other significant activities in other areas. If this option proved ineffective, a devoted service
connecting La Torre to Paraiso could be coproduced by inhabitants, who would benefit of the new
connection as well as of the occasion of employment it may provide to some locals.
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The neighbourhood of La Torre proves a good example to observe how the two options may also
be developed in relation to other forms of intervention. Many inhabitants rely on few public transport
options, so that the locations and opportunities they can reach are in many cases limited. For example,
the attractive and near area of Lucero Bajo can usually be reached with at least one transfer. Improving
the comfort and usability of existing public transport services may make them more usable, for example
facilitating the understanding of how the public transport routes work. A matchmaking system would
instead allow for the use of existing mobility practices to satisfy the needs of a wider number of local
inhabitants. If these actions prove insufficient for improving accessibility due to the persisting lack of
services, coproduced services may provide a possible solution, offering a required connection by using
currently unused bottom-up resources. Both public and private transport providers in fact often refuse
to serve these areas “They always promised us to bring a bus line to the neighbourhood, where not
even taxi drivers like to come. They say that roads are unsafe due to their poor maintenance and to the
presence of criminals” (J., La Merced del Sur).
Coproduction could thus be more efficient and effective than traditional courses of action. In fact,
it would assess different ways of improving existing services before investing additional resources
for providing new ones. Furthermore, the evaluation of each option considers the need for accessing
valued opportunities, guarantying the effectiveness of the measures in responding to the specific
accessibility needs of an area and its inhabitants. According to this perspective, institutions should
provide new public transport services or new facilities only in case there is no room to improve existing
equipment. The discussion here provided thus offers a preliminary but significant insight on suitable
priority interventions for areas suffering from low levels of accessibility. In doing so, the proposed
approach expands a set of options often limited to the public provision of infrastructures and services.
An evaluation of the benefits and costs for each measure is less straightforward, though. Assuming
the provision of sufficient accessibility as the main aim of urban mobility planning and policy [27],
this would be the target that a measure should be able to achieve. The benefits of a measure would thus
depend on the number of people who would see an improvement to the accessibility available to them,
eventually assuming that the generated benefit is inversely proportional to the current socioeconomic
condition of the person. The benefits may be tentatively quantified attaching a monetary value to saved
travel time, or to each additional new opportunity that can be reached. Nonetheless, this money-based
approach is prone to limitations and should also consider the diminishing marginal value of increased
accessibility [53]. In case a varied set of feasible measures could improve the accessibility available
to the targeted area or population, the evaluation would consider their costs. For example, if both a
coproduced bus line and a new cableway infrastructure were able to improve the basic accessibility
available to La Torre, the former, cheaper option would probably be preferable.
However, the policy measures previously proposed are prone to limitations. The proposed
approach is in fact not sufficient for addressing individual and collective mobility needs, especially
when considering their operational implications. Other elements that influence the functioning of
urban mobility require traditional approaches: for example, this is the case for the spatial distribution
of significant activities to be reached, or for the infrastructures that convey huge mobility flows. The
case of Bogotá and its peripheral settlements suggests that a few issues need to be faced in parallel with
the provision of new services. Neighbourhoods of informal origins show difficult spatial conditions
(for example, their orography) and a lack of adequate infrastructures (like roads) that function as
obstacles to the provision of ordinary services. The same inhabitants acknowledge this: “In general,
the inhabitants here lack a lot of basic services (water, gas, electricity . . . ) as well as public equipment
(like parks and sport grounds). Nonetheless, I think that the situation will improve, especially if the
TransMiCable (e.g., a cableway connecting to the nearest us terminal) will be built” (L., La Torre).
Furthermore, significant conditions for the development of the discussed options must face
unwelcoming local conditions. For example, subjects other than public institutions have consistent
power on the peripheral settlements and often exercise it with violence. Finally, Bogotá would require
a drastic change in the current approaches to urban planning and policy. Despite an explicitly declared
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interest in improving access to urban opportunities for the worst-off inhabitants, these aims have only
been partially pursued. Furthermore, the construction of new infrastructures is still the main strategy
to address the urban mobility needs [54], while the public transport system is suffering severe financial
restrictions. The approaches previously discussed may thus contribute to the economic sustainability
of the existing (public) transport system of Bogotá, mobilizing additional resources to provide needed
services and increasing their use by nudging individual travel choices.
6. Policy Implementation: Roles and Issues for Institutions

In the implementation phase, the policy defined in the previous stages is given form and effect,
being put into practice and delivered to the public. Institutions are fundamental for implementing
shared use mobility policy measures for urban mobility, having a twofold role. On the one hand,
they need to recognize which areas and populations require priority interventions for enhancing
accessibility. On the other hand, they should recognize what benefits would be generated by different
measures and assess if the preconditions for their implementation are present. In relation to settings
where such measures may be developed, institutional actors may act as facilitators, providing the
conditions that would allow the creation and the growth of such initiatives.
Institutions should recognize those areas and communities that may potentially host initiatives
such as service coproduction and demand matchmaking. Different forms of capital would be required:
monetary resources to invest (economic capital), skilled people to run the service (human capital) and
even the trust and sense of community that may inspire and sustain similar initiatives (social capital).
For example, in the case of coproduced services, the necessary human resources would refer to “the
human power needed to plan, manage, operate, and support local public transport systems” [55] (p. 4).
In the case of matchmaking schemes, these resources would imply instead the managerial skills to run
the initiative as well as the fundamental trust bounds required to keep beneficiaries together. While
the social and human capital to be mobilized may also be promoted by public institutions [56], it is
more suitable to address areas where local subjects (associations, community organizations, charities)
are already active.
Once promising settings are recognised, institutions may have a double role as facilitators of
the mentioned initiatives. First, they may provide trained figures to sustain such processes, such as
‘coproduction development officers’ [35] in charge of supporting and accompanying local coproduction
initiatives. Moreover, institutions should also intervene on a normative dimension, providing the
frameworks of rules within which such initiatives may develop. The explored options often challenge
existing norms, leading to the “need to reconceptualise service provision as a process of social
construction in which actors in self-organizing systems negotiate rules, norms and institutional
frameworks rather than taking the rules of the game as given” [35] (p. 858). For example, new
legal subjects may be necessary. The mentioned initiatives in fact imply that more complex forms of
engagement may then be relevant, involving users in the definition of desired services as well as in
their provision. This would foster the creation of community enterprises devoted to transport services.
Definable as “organizations that promote innovate solutions for development, autoregulation, and
management of spaces and services for local communities” [57], community enterprises may actively
involve local users in the provision of needed mobility services, tailored on the exigencies directly
expressed by users.
Normative frameworks are not neutral and rather directly involve a political dimension, though.
A first political element implied by the mentioned options refers to their shaping. This element is
highlighted by coproduction initiatives. The very interest in coproducing services and goods may
appear as a political action: in fact, “while many of the collective activities undertaken by Southern
residents may not involve direct political claims, nevertheless through their focus on state services
(as well as other kinds of resource) they involve some engagement with the state and the realm of
politics” [58] (p. 343). Moreover, the interactions between the involved actors imply the typical
dynamics of policy processes, shaping not only the desired outcome, but also the relationships between
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the subjects, and the subjects themselves. Such processes in fact require a mutual adjustment of
expectations [59] and contribute to the formation of values and meanings [60]. However, a possibly
ambiguous role of institutions emerges: institutional subjects need to have an enabling role to guarantee
the success of such initiatives [61], but the political dimension of these processes implies that, anyway,
they are ordinary actors deploying their own tactics and strategies. The involved subjects and the
interactions they establish between themselves are thus crucial for the shaping of shared use mobility
policy approaches. Nonetheless, such elements necessarily refer to small-scale initiatives, where the
involved communities and areas are easily definable and can be involved within specific interactions.
A second political element refers instead to the adoption and the acceptance of the mentioned
initiatives. Innovative solutions cannot be simply technically feasible but need to be recognized
as socially useful, and they require that institutions support their development [62]. For example,
in the case of Bogotá, the adoption of initiatives of this kind may be more suitable in peripheral
settings, especially when characterized by high degrees of informality. On the one hand, the setting
conditions (in terms of spatial features as well as of existing mobility demands) often do not allow
the provision of traditional services, due to their infrastructural requirements (e.g., road conditions)
or entry conditions (e.g., high fares, complex system functioning). On the other hand, institutions at
different levels (with the municipality playing a leading role) still tend to privilege the provision of
infrastructures, as the recent project for a cableway serving one of the peripheral areas investigated in
this work demonstrates [63]. The presence of different institutional subjects also raises governance
issues related to the cooperation between different bodies, an aspect that is generally critical in relation
to urban mobility issues. Apparently, these conditions do not match with the experimentation of
innovative solutions involving a wide range of actors as protagonists; nonetheless, as proven by other
coproduction experiences [61], these initiatives may and should contribute to institutional change,
redesigning existing institutions.
A third significant dimension refers to the acceptability that such initiatives may receive from
the bottom. A first dimension refers to the actual will that local inhabitants may have to engage in
such initiatives, sharing their own practices or participating in the provision of needed services. Such
form of community action in fact depends on specific features of places and individuals, making
it difficult to recognize replicable models [64]. Consequently, mobility practices that show similar
needs and forms are simply a starting point for the eventual design of shared use mobility policy
measures. Communities may thus be considered as developers of policy initiatives not a priori, but
rather according to the specific inclinations they may show. A second dimension refers instead to the
presence of other ongoing informal initiatives, that may base their existence also on the exploitation
of current imbalances. For example, the neighbourhood of La Torre is served by an informal van
connection that simply provides access to the nearest public transport stop, reachable only with a
steep route. However, the violence used by the subjects operating such services impeded the provision
of additional services, so that the municipality for example refused to bring a planned bus route to
the neighbourhood because of the many threats received. Shared use mobility measures may thus be
considered feasible when considering ongoing mobility practices but features of the local settings are
crucial to determine their actual degree of feasibility.
Finally, a fourth political issue refers to the real benefits and costs generated by the discussed policy
approaches, and the consequent social legitimacy of implemented measures directly involving their
beneficiaries. While transport involves a specific form of justice due to the impact it has on individuals’
quality of life [27], the definition of the subjects who should provide it is less straightforward. Public
institutions have been traditionally in charge of planning and providing public transport services,
but other actors may be relevant too. In fact, “it may be that the capabilitarian ideal society is better
reached by a coordinated commitment to individual action or by relying on market mechanisms” [65]
(p. 7). Nonetheless, the setting of Bogotá requires a realistic assessment of the actors who may
contribute to the enhancement of the accessibility available in informal settlements through shared use
mobility measures.
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At least three actors may be involved in the development of these initiatives: inhabitants,
institutions and private companies. Local inhabitants may be involved only if these initiatives prove
to be feasible (that is, local resources are available and can be mobilised) and beneficial (for example,
providing also unprecedented employment and entrepreneurial occasions). In the perspective of the
inhabitants, the benefits of these measures should then go beyond the simple mobility sphere and
obviously exceed costs. Institutions should be responsible for assessing what areas need accessibility
improvements and, if so, under what conditions shared use mobility initiatives may be relevant.
Additionally, a supportive role actively promoting the development of initiatives would be necessary.
In this perspective, and contrarily to what has been feared by some scholars [33,34], institutions would
not retreat from the necessary provision of sufficient levels of accessibility to areas or populations
in need but would rather have a wider range of operational options at their disposal. Additionally,
non-local actors may potentially intervene in the development of similar initiatives, for example in the
case of private companies offering transport services. However, the settings here presented show low
levels of profitability (as the current absence of significant transport services demonstrates) and, even
if new initiatives were to be introduced, the benefits provided by enhanced accessibility should be
realistically compared with the costs that inhabitants should pay. Considering the fundamental role
of accessibility for the wellbeing of the targeted populations and the priority attributed to measures
contributing in this sense [27], institutions may act as controllers of such eventual private initiatives.
7. Conclusions
The feasibility of shared use mobility policies and their significance for enhancing accessibility to
urban opportunities has been observed throughout the stages of the policy making cycle. To foster
their development, institutions should define areas and populations requiring priority interventions
for enhancing accessibility and consequently act as facilitators for the deployment of differentiated
courses of action. Interestingly, coproduction and matchmaking acquire new meanings in the marginal
settings here examined. Coproduction goes beyond participation in design, but rather gives a leading
role to local inhabitants for the provision of needed services. Matchmaking instead configures new
forms of sharing for mobility, which do not simply imply the presence of technology-based companies
offering inedited services but rather make people put their own everyday practices together.
The proposed approach seems to configure several advantages for institutions intervening on
urban mobility. On the one hand, the coproduction of services may be able to mobilise additional
resources by involving local communities and their economic, social and human forms of capital.
On the other hand, the matchmaking of mobility demands allows the more efficient use of existent
resources by intercepting and coordinating potential users who could benefit from their use. Moreover,
considering local subjects as potential protagonists of mobility service provisions, it may be possible
not only to respond to local mobility needs but also to offer further occasions for local development,
for example, offering new employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. The new mobility
opportunities would thus actively involve individuals “in shaping their own destiny” [66] (p. 53).
However, the positive outcomes would involve not only the expansion of individual opportunities
required to guarantee societal development [67] but also the provision of novel resources and the
generation of new behaviours that may have positive collective externalities [30].
However, these approaches should be intended as complementary to traditional takes on urban
mobility, promoting alternative courses of action where usual options are not viable (e.g., construction
of new infrastructures or provision of new services). Some experiences from other Latin American
settings [68] have proved effective in this sense. A first requirement refers to the territorialisation of
these measures, defining analytical tools to define which urban settings and populations may be more
in need of similar actions, as well as those areas and subjects that present conditions favourable for the
implementation of such measures (e.g., the presence of various forms of capital required to coproduce
services). Switching from an emphasis on transport goods provisions to their actual use, behavioural
measures may instead usefully promote the use of specific infrastructures and services, reducing the
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risks of realizing underused ‘white elephants’ [69]. Therefore, even the overall implications of such
measures may be relevant: for example, the development of behavioural approaches may change some
dynamics underlying urban mobility modelling, introducing new variables and possibly leading to
different results when simulating the outcomes of planning and policy measures.
In conclusion, a focus on individual opportunities appears to be a suitable source for new policy
approaches to urban issues. The discussion provided in this paper recognizes the need for proposing
shared use mobility policy approaches and assesses their significance in the various settings where
they could be significant, considering the local specificities that may make a focus on opportunities
more relevant. Nonetheless, the main element of interest seems to be the possibility to consider sharing
not only in those settings where it is already an established option for mobility, but even to address
through it the urgent need for accessibility in marginal settlements.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.
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131
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Special Issue Editors

MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade

ISBN 978-3-03897-988-3 (Pbk)

About the Special Issue Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Giuseppe Salvia, Eugenio Morello and Andrea Arcidiacono

Giacomo Durante and Margherita Turvani

Mina Akhavan, Ilaria Mariotti, Lisa Astolﬁ and Annapaola Canevari

Mayo Fuster Morell and Ricard Espelt

Aﬁf Fathullah and Katharine S. Willis

Eugenio Morello is an architect by education, an associate professor of urban design at Politecnico

Received: 31 January 2019; Accepted: 20 February 2019; Published: 22 February 2019

1. Contemporary ‘Shapring’: How is Sharing Shaping Urban Practices and Dynamics?

Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 23; doi:10.3390/urbansci3010023 1 www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci

2. Shapring Domestic Space for Accommodation

3. Shapring Working Space and Ofﬁces

4. Shapring through Collaborative Platforms

5. Shapring through Data

Received: 14 July 2018; Accepted: 7 September 2018; Published: 12 September 2018

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 88; doi:10.3390/urbansci2030088 6 www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci

2. Materials and Methods

Entire Homes Private Rooms Shared Rooms Total

ZLU EHGURRP ZLU

Supplementary Materials: The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/2/3/88/s1.

Received: 2 June 2018; Accepted: 27 July 2018; Published: 2 August 2018

Keywords: ageing; cohousing; architecture; co-design; spatial agency; sharing; design-research;

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 64; doi:10.3390/urbansci2030064 16 www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci

2. Ageing, Sharing, and Cohousing

3. Architecture and the Creation of Cohousing

4. Methodology: Exploring the Potential of Spatial Agency through Design-Research

5. Workshop One: Design Game

6. Workshop Two: Narrative Workshop

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Received: 16 July 2018; Accepted: 30 August 2018; Published: 3 September 2018

Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 83; doi:10.3390/urbansci2030083 29 www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci

2. Coworking in the Sharing Economy Debate

3. Coworking and Urban Area Renewal

4. Materials and Methods

5.1. Mapping Italian Coworking Businesses

Figure 1. Map of CBs by municipality.

5.2. Results of the National Survey on Coworking Businesses

Figure 2. Share of respondents by performance category.

5.2.1. Longevity and Dimension

Figure 3. Timespan of activity by performance category.

Figure 4. Dimension of CSs by performance category.

Low Performance Medium Performance High Performance

Low Performance Medium Performance High Performance

5.2.2. Flexibility and Proﬁtability of Contracts

Figure 5. Number of contracts offered by performance category.

Figure 10. Most proﬁtable contracts by performance category.

Figure 11. Costliest contracts by performance category.

5.2.3. Occupancy and Services Provided

Figure 13. Number of meeting rooms by performance category.

Figure 15. Opening days by performance category.

Figure 16. Opening hours by performance category.

5.3. Comparison of Coworking and Traditional Ofﬁce Rent Prices

Received: 11 October 2018; Accepted: 10 December 2018; Published: 24 December 2018

Keywords: coworking spaces; social street; social relations; local communities

Urban Sci. 2019, 3, 2; doi:10.3390/urbansci3010002 50 www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci

2.1. New Forms of Workplace: The Rise of Coworking Spaces

www.socialstreet.it). As a form of neighbourhood community, the SoSt aspires to promote good

3.1. Exploring Coworking Spaces in Italy

Figure 2. The location of CS in Italy at the beginning of 2018. Source [7].

Figure 3. The agglomeration of CS in Milan. Source [8] (p. 10).

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